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TALES
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OPINIONS OF THE PBESS
IN THE MIDST OP LIFE.
By AMBROSE BIEBCE.
' Terrifying and realistic as Ambrose Bierce is— he spires no details that mny impress— the literary quality of his work is undeniiible, and the fa ci na- tion exercised by the stories is due to the compactnes-? of his style, its clearness and terseness, and the sententious brevity of his phrases ; every word is in its place and tells. In his own line, our author is not likely to be beaten from the field by anyone.'— Spectato a.
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* "In the Midst of Life" is a collection of powerful and uncanny t-^lea of the American Civil War. The writer describes with vivid and often ghastly realism the horrors and mysteries of that dreadful struggle. His descriptions of the wounds and anguish of the battlefield are tinted with real human blood. Mr. Bierce portrays the most appalling scenes with a deliberation and force and precision that are rarely seen. The realism of Walt Whitmans " Specimen Days " is pale compared with that of " In the Midst of Life." It is a book that one reads breathlessly and s'ludderingly. . . . Aremarkableliterary feat'— Scottish Lbadbb
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' The stories are ghastly in their terrible intensity, and their conception disDlays a wealth of imaginative gruesomeness that should affect even th"? most hardened. . . . The descriptions are realistic in the extreme, and wo have rarely met with more affecting specimens of word-painting.'
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' I believe that no one on earth can write so terrible a story as Ambrose Bierce can.' — Lukk Sharp, in The Detroit Fres Press.
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IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
$afe0 of ^ofi»ier0 anb CimfiarxB
BY
AMBROSE BIERCE
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1S93
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CONTENTS
PATH THE SUITABLE SURR0UXDIXG3 I
THE NIGHT 1
THE DAY BEFORE 4
THE DAY AFTER . . . , • . . . 8
SOLDIEnS
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 15
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 25
CHICKAMAUGA 41
A SON OF THE GODS 51
ONE OF THE MISSING ....... 63
KILLED AT RESACA 83
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 93
A TOUGH TUSSLE . . , , 107
THE COUP DE GRACE . 121
PARKER ADDERSCN, PHILOSOPHER . , , , . . 131
VI
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
CIVILIANS
TAGK A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. . , , , , .145
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE , . . . , . . 163
A HOLY TErvROK 175
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA . . , , • . . 197
THE BOARDED WINDOW ....... 203
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT . . . . , 211
HAITA THE SHEPHERD 226
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE . . • • • .236
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS
THE NIGHT
One midsummer night a farmer's boy living about ten miles from tbe city of Cincinnati, was following a bridle path through a dense and dark forest. He had been searching for some missing cows, and at nightfall found himself a long way from home, and in a part of the country with which he was only partly familiar. But he was a stout-hearted lad, and, know- ing his general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into the bridle path, and observing that it ran in the right direction, he followed it.
The night was clear, but in the woods it was ex- ceedingly dark. It was more by the sense of touch than by that of sight that the lad kept the path. He could not, indeed, very easily go astray ; the under- growth on both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam
B
2 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
of light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left. The sight of it startled him, and set his heart beating audibly.
' The old Breede house is somewhere about here/ he said to himself. * This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our side. Ugh ! what should a light be doing there ? I don't like it.'
Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment later and he had emerged from the forest into a small, open space, mostly upgrown to brambles. There were remnants of a rotting fence. A few yards from the trail, in the middle of the clearing, was the house, from which the light came through an un- glazed window. The window had once contained glass, but that and its supporting frame had long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands of venturesome boys, to attest alike their courage and their hostility to the supernatural ; for the Breede house bore the evil reputation of being haunted. Possibly it was not, but even the hardiest sceptic could not deny that it was deserted — which, in rural regions, is much the same thing.
Looking at the mysterious dim light shining from the ruined window, the boy remembered with appre- hension that his own hand had assisted at the destruction. His penitence was, of course, poignant in proportion to its tardiness and inefficacy. He half expected to be set upon by all the unworldly and bodiless malevolences whom he had outraged by assisting to break alike their windows and their
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 3
peace. Yet this stubborn lad, shaking in every limb, would not retreat. The blood in his veins was strong and rich with the iron of tbe frontiersman. He was but two removes from the generation which had subdued the Indian. He started to pass the house.
As he was going by, he looked in at the blank window space, and saw a strange and terrifying sight — the figure of a man seated in the centre of the room, at a table upon which lay some loose sheets of paper. The elbows rested on the table, the hands supporting the head, which was uncovered. On each side the fingers were pushed into the hair. The face showed pale in the light of a single candle a little to one side. The flame illuminated that side of the face, the other was in deep shadow. The man's eyes were fixed upon the blank window space with a stare in which an older and cooler observer might have discerned something of apprehension, but which seemed to the lad altogether soulless. He believed the man to be dead.
The situation was horrible, but not without its fascination. The boy paused in his flight to note it all. He endeavoured to still the beating of his heart by holding his breath until half suffocated. He was weak, faint, trembling; he could feel the deathly whiteness of his face. Nevertheless, he set his teeth and resolutely advanced to the house. He had no conscious intention — it was the mere courage of terror. He thrust his white face forward into the
B 2
4 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
illuminated opening. At that instant a strange, harsh cry, a shriek, broke upon the silence of the night — the note of a screech owl. The man sprang to his feet, overturning the table and extinguishing the candle. The boy took to his heels.
THE DAY BEFORE
* Good-morning, Colston. I am in luck, it seems. You have often said that my commendation of your literary work was mere civility, and here you find me absorbed — actually merged— in your latest story in the Messenger. Nothing less shocking than your touch upon my shoulder would have roused me to consciousness/
' The proof is stronger than you seem to know,' replied the man addressed ; ' so keen is your eager- ness to read my story that you are willing to re- nounce selfish considerations and forego all the pleasure that you could get from it.'
' I don't understand you,' said the other, folding the newspaper that he held, and putting it in his pocket. 'You writers are a queer lot, anyhow. Come, tell me what I have done or omitted in this matter. In what way does the pleasure that I get, or might get, from your work depend on me ? '
' In many ways. Let me ask you how you would enjoy your dinner if you took it in this street car. Suppose the phonograph so perfected as to be able to give you an entire opera — singing, orchestration,
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS %
and all ; do you think you would get much pleasure out of it if you turned it on at your office during business hours ? Do you really care for a serenade by Schubert when you hear it fiddled by an untimely Italian on a morning ferry-boat ? Are you always cocked and primed for admiration? Do you keep every mood on tap, ready to any demand ? Let me remind you, sir, that the story which you have done me the honour to begin as a means of becoming oblivious to the discomfort of this street car is a ghost story ! '
*Well?'
* Well ! Has the reader no duties corresponding to his privileges ? You have paid five cents for that newspaper. It is yours. You have the right to read it when and where you will. Much of what is in it is neither helped nor harmed by time, and place, and mood ; some of it actually requires to be read at once — while it is fizzing. But my story is not of that character. It is not the " very latest advices '* from Ghost Land. You are not expected to keep yourself au courant with what is going on in the realm of spooks. The stuff will keep until you have leisure to put yourself into the frame of mind appro- priate to the sentiment of the piece — which I re- spectfully submit that you cannot do in a street car, even if you are the only passenger. The solitude is not of the right sort. An author has rights which the reader is bound to respect.'
' For specific example ? '
6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
*Tlie right to tlie reader's undivided attention. To deny him this is immoral. To make him share your attention with the rattle of a street car, the moving panorama of the crowds on the sidewalks, and the buildings beyond — with any of the thousands of distractions which make our customary environ- ment— is to treat him with gross injustice. By God, it is infamous ! '
The speaker had risen to his feet, and was steady- ing himself by one of the straps hanging from the roof of the car. The other man looked up at him in sudden astonishment, wondering how so trivial a grievance could seem to justify so strong language. He saw that his friend's face was uncommonly pale, and that Ms eyes glowed like living coals.
* You know what I mean,' continued the writer, impetuously, crowding his words — ' You know what I mean, Marsh. My stuff in this morning's Mes- senger is plainly sub-headed " A Ghost Story." That is ample notice to all. Every honourable reader will understand it as prescribing by implication the con- ditions under which the work is to be read.'
The man addressed as Marsh winced a trifle, then asked with a smile : ^ What conditions ? You know that I am only a plain business man, who cannot be supposed to understand such things. How, when, where should I read your ghost story ? '
* In solitude — at night — by the light of a candle. There are certain emotions which a writer can easily enough excite — such as compassion or merriment. I
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 7
can move you to tears or laughter under almost any circumstances. But for my ghost story to be effective you must be made to feel fear — at least a strong sense of the supernatural — and that is a different matter. I have a right to expect that if you read me at all you will give me a chance ; that you will make yourself accessible to the emotion which I try to inspire.'
The car had now arrived at its terminus and stopped. The trip just completed was its first for the day, and the conversation of the two early passengers had not been interrupted. The streets were yet silent and desolate; the house tops were just touched by the rising sun. As they stepped from the car and walked away together Marsh narrowly eyed his companion, who was reported, like most men of uncommon literary ability, to be addicted to various destructive vices. That is the revenge which dull minds take upon bright ones in resent- ment of their superiority. Mr. Colston was known as a man of genius. There are honest souls who believe that genius is a mode of excess. It was known that Colston did not drink liquor, but many said that he ate opium. Something in his appear- auce that morning — a certain wildness of the eyes, an unusual pallor, a thickness and rapidity of speech — were taken by Mr. Marsh to confirm the report. Nevertheless, he had not the self-denial to abandon a subject which he found interesting, however it might excite his friend.
8 IN THE MIDST OF LITE
' Do you mean to say,' he began, 'that if I take the trouble to observe your directions — place myself in the condition which you demand : solitude, night, and a tallow candle — you can with your ghastliest work give me an uncomfortable sense of the super- natural, as you call it ? Can you accelerate my pulse, make me start at sudden noises, send a nervous chill along my spine, and cause my hair to rise ? '
Colston turned suddenly and looked him squarely in the eyes as they walked. ' You would not dare — you have not the courage,' he said. He emphasised the words with a contemptuous gesture. ' You are brave enough to read me in a street car, but — in a deserted house — alone — in the forest — at night! Bah ! I have a manuscript in my pocket that would kill you.'
Marsh was angry. He knew himself a man of courage, and the words stung him. ' If you know such a place,' he said, ' take me there to-night and leave me your story and a candle. Call for me when I've had time enough to read it, and I'll tell you the entire plot and — kick you out of the place.'
That is how it occurred that the farmer's boy, looking in at an unglazed window of the Breede house; saw a man sitting in the light of a candle.
THE DAY AFTER
Late in the afternoon of the next day three men and a boy approached the Breede house from that
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 9
point of tlie compass toward wliicli the boy had fled the preceding night. They were in high spirits apparently ; they talked loudly and laughed. They made facetious and good-humoured ironical remarks to the boy about his adventure, which evidently they did not believe in. The boy accepted their raillery with seriousness, making no reply. He had a sense of the fitness of things, and knew that one who pro- fesses to have seen a dead man rise from his seat and blow out a candle is not a credible witness.
Arrived at the house, and finding the door bolted on the inside, the party of investigators entered with- out further ceremony than breaking it down. Lead- ing out of the passage into which this door had opened was another on the right and one on the left. These two doors also were fastened, and were broken in. They first entered at random the one on the left. It was vacant. In the room on the right — the one which had the blank front window — was the dead body of a man.
It lay partly on one side, with the forearm beneath it, the cheek on the floor. The eyes were wide open ; the stare was not an agreeable thing to encounter. An overthrown table, a partly-burned candle, a chair, and some paper with writing on it, were all else that the room contained. The men looked at the body, touching the face in turn. The bo}^ gravely stood at the head, assuming a look of ownership. It was the proudest moment of his life. One of the men said to him, ' You're a good un,' a
lo IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
remark which was received by the two others with nods of acquiescence. It was Scepticism apologising to Truth. Then one of the men took from the floor the sheets of manuscript and stepped to the window, for already the evening shadows were glooming the forest. The song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the distance, and a monstrous beetle sped by the window on roaring wings, and thundered away out of hearing.
THE MANUSCRIPT
* Before committing the act which, rightly or wrongly, I have resolved on, and appearing before my Maker for judgment, I, James E,. Colston, deem it my duty as a journalist to make a statement to the public. My name is, I believe, tolerably well known to the people as a writer of tragic tales, but the soberest imagination never conceived anything so gloomy as my own life and history. Not in inci- dent : my life has been destitute of adv^enture and action. But my mental career has been lurid with experiences such as kill and damn. I shall not recount them here — some of them are written and ready for publication elsewhere. The object of these lines is to explain to whomsoever may be interested that my death is voluntary — my own act. I shall die at twelve o'clock on the night of the 15th of July — a significant anniversary to me, for it was on that day, and at that hour, that my friend in time and eternity, Charles Breede, performed his vow to
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS li
me by the same act whicli his fidelity to our pledge now entails upon me. He took his life in his little house in the Copeton woods. There was the cus- tomary verdict of '' temporary insanity." Had I testified at that inquest, had I told all I knew, they would have called me mad !
' I have still a week of life in which to arrange my worldly affairs, and prepare for the great change. It is enough, for I have but few affairs, and it is now four years since death became an imperative obliga- tion.
* I shall bear this writing on my body ; the finder will please hand it to the coroner.
'James R. Colston.
<P.S.— Willard Marsh, on this the fatal fifteenth day of July, I hand you this manuscript, to be opened and read under the conditions agreed upon, and at the place which I designate. I forego my intention to keep it on my body to explain the manner of my death, which is not important. It will serve to explain the manner of yours. I am to call for you during the night to receive assurance that you have read the manuscript. You know me well enough to expect me. But, my friend, it ii^ill he after twelve o'clock. May God haye mercy on our souls !
*J. R. C*
Before the man who was reading this manuscript had finished, the candle had been picked up and
12 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
liglited. When tlie reader had done, he quietly thrust the paper against the flame, and despite the protestations of the others held it until it was burnt to ashes. The man who did this, and who placidly endured a severe reprimand from the coroner, was a son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. At the inquest nothing could elicit an intelligible account of what the paper contained.
From the * Times '
* Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy com- mitted to the asylum Mr. James R. Colston, a writer of some local reputation, connected with the Mes^ senger. It will be remembered that on the evening of the 15th inst. Mr. Colston was given into custody by one of his fellow-lodgers in the Baine House, who had observed him acting very suspiciously, bar- ing his throat and whetting a razor — occasionally trying its edge by actually cutting through the skin of his arm, etc. On being handed over to the police, the unfortunate man made a desperate resis- tance and has ever since been so violent that it has been necessary to keep him in a strait-jacket. Most of our esteemed contemporary's other writers are still at large.'
SOLDIERS
A HOUSEMAN IN THE SKY
One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861, a soldier lay in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay at full length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, hig head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the some- what methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge box at the back of his belt, he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being the just and legal penalty of his crime.
The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road which, after ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point, turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred yards. There it turned south- ward again and went zigzagging downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat rock, jutting out from the ridge to the northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff;
I6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
a stone dropped from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock but of the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy to look.
The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which flow^ed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground looked hardly larger than an ordinary door-yard, but was really several acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and through which the road had somehow made its climb to the summit. The configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from our point of observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not but have wondered how the road w^hicli found a way out of it had found a way into it, and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that parted the meadow two thousand feet below.
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre of war ; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat trap, in which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 17
starved an c^rmy to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had marched all the previous day and night and were resting. At nightfall they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their unfaithful sentinel now slept, and, descending the other slope of the ridge, fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was to surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure their position would be perilous in the extreme ; and fail they surely would should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the move- ment.
The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were able to command in the moun- tain country of Western Virginia. His home was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morn- ing he had risen from the breakfast table and said, quietly but gravely : ' Father, a Union regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it.'
The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in silence, and replied: ' Go, Carter, and, whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed you, is in a most critical condition ; at the best she
c
I8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
cannot be witli us longer than a few weeks, but tliat time is precious. It would be better not to disturb her.'
So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to liis father, who returned the salute with a stately courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left the home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows and his officers ; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at the extreme outpost. Never- theless, fatigue had been stronger than resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse him from his state of crime who shall say ? Without a movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his con- sciousness— whispered into the ear of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips have ever spoken, no human memory ever has re- called. He quietly raised his forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his rifle.
His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and sharply outlined against the sky, was an equestrian statue of impressive
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKV l#
dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The grey costume harmonised with its aerial background; the metal of accoutre- ment and caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had no points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the ' grip ' ; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo ; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly to the left, showed only an outline of temple and beard ; he was looking down- ward to the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy, the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.
For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art reared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a slight movement of the group ; the horse, without moving its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the significance of
c2
20 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the piece, and, glancing through the sights, covered a vital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed foeman — seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave compassionate heart.
Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in war — an enemy who has surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades — an enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its numbers ? Carter Druse grew deathly pale ; he shook in every limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.
It was not for long ; in another moment his face was raised from earth, his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the trigger ; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound. He could not hope to capture that enemy ; to alarm him would but send him dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 2i
soldier was plain : the man must be shot dead from ambush — without warning, without a moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no — there is a hope ; he may have discovered nothing — perhaps he is but admiring the sublimitj of the landscape. If permitted he may turn ana ride carelessly away in the direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at the instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his fixity of attention — Druse turned his head and looked below, through the deeps of air downward, -as from the surface to the bottom of a translucent sea. He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and horses — some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a hundred summits !
Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their parting. ' What- ever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.' He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed ; his nerves were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's — not a tremor affected any muscle of his body ; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim, was regular and slow.
22 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Duty Bad conquered ; tlie spirit had said to the body: '■ Peace, be still.' He fired.
At that moment an officer of the Federal force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in quest of know- ledge, had left the hidden bivouac in the valley, and, with aimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented a clean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point half of the way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue thence to the tops of the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its summit, the officer saw an astonishing sight — a man on horse- back riding down into the valley through the air !
Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward, waving like a plume. His right hand was concealed in the cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every hoof stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked
A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 23
they ceased, with all the legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But this was a flight!
Filled with amazement and terror by this appari- tion of a horseman in the sky — half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new Apocalypse, the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions ; his legs failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in the trees — a sound that died without an echo, and all was still.
The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together, he ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff to a point a half-mile from its foot; thereabout he expected to find his man ; and thereabout he naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had been so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of the marvellous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of march of aerial cavalry is directed downward, and that he could find the objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff". A half hour later he returned to camp.
This officer was a wise man ; he knew better than to tell an incredible truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the expedition, he answered : —
' Yes, sir ; there is no road leading down into this valley from the southward.'
24 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
The commander, knowing better, smiled.
After firing his shot private Carter Druse re- loaded his rifle and resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.
' Did you fire ? ' the sergeant whispered.
' Yes.'
* At what?'
' A horse. It was standing on yonder rock — pretty far out. You see it is no longer there. It went over the cliff.'
The man's face was white but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having answered, he turned away his face and said no more. The sergeant did not understand.
' See here, Druse,' he said, after a moment's silence, ' it's no use making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the horse ? '
' Yes.'
'Who?'
' My father.'
The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. < Good God!' he said.
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encir- cled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross- timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway sup- plied a footing for him and his executioners — two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as ' support,' that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest — a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know w^hat was occurring at the centre
26 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
of the bridge ; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot plank which traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight ; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground — a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators — a single company of infantry in line, at ' parade rest,' the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sen- tinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 27
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, which was that of a planter. His features were good — a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers ; his eyes were large and dark grey and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whoso neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hang- ing many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private Boldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the con- demned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain ; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former, the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement com-
28 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
mended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his 'unsteadfast footing,' then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it ap- peared to move ! What a sluggish stream !
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift — all had dis- tracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil ; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by — it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each sti-oke with impatience and ■ — he knew not why — apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer ; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife ; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 29
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. * If I could free my hands/ he thought, *I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines ; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance.'
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly-respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner, and, like other slave owners, a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South,
30 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a grey-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water, her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
' The Yanks are repairing the railroads,' said the man, *and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order, and built a stockade on the other bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught inter- fering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.'
^ How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge ? ' Far- quhar asked.
'- About thirty miles.'
* Is there no force on this side the creek ? *
* Only a picket post half a mile out, on the rail- road, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.'
* Suppose a man — a civilian and student of hang- ing— should elude the .picket post and perhaps get
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 31
the better of the sentinel,' said Farquhar, smiling, ' what could he accomplish ? '
The soldier reflected. *I was there a month ago,' he replied. ' I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of . driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow.'
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going north- ward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
Ill
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge, he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awak- ened— ages later, it seemed to him — by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification, and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness — of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied
3^ IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced ; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material sub- stance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscilla- tion, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash ; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored ; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him, and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river ! — the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the blackness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible ! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface — knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. ' To be hanged and drowned,' he thought, ' that is not so bad ; but I do not wish to be shot. No ; I will not be shot ; that is not fair.'
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, with-
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 33
out interest in the outcome. What splendid effort ! — what magnificent, what superhuman strength ! Ahj that was a fine endeavour ! Bravo ! The cord fell away ; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. ^ Put it back, put it back ! ' He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly ; his brain was on fire ; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish ! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, down- ward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge ; his eyes were blinded by the sun- light ; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek !
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived.
D
34 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf — saw the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant- bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colours in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat — all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream ; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his exe- cutioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him ; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire ; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 35
the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye, and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest and that all famous marks- men had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round ; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a dis- tinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant ; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and piti- lessly— with what an even, calm intonation, presag- ing and enforcing tranquillity in the men — with what accurately-measured intervals fell those cruel words :
'Attention, company. . . . Shoulder arms. . . . Ready. . . . Aim. . . . Fire.'
Farquhar dived — dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly down- ward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was un- comfortably warm, and he snatched it out.
D 2
36 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
As lie rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water ; he was perceptibly farther down stream — nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading ; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder ; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs ; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
' The officer,' he reasoned, ' will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all ! '
An appalling plash within two yards of him, followed by a loud rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him ! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten watei', he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
' They will not do that again,' he thought ; * the
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE yj
next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun ; the smoke will apprise me — the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good gun.'
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round — spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort and men — all were commingled and blurred. Objects were re- presented by their colours only ; circular horizontal streaks of colour — that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gjn-ation which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream — • the southern bank — and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over him- self in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds ; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants ; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, in- haled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks, and the wind made in their branches the music of aBolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape, was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
38 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
A whizz and rattle of grapesliot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he travelled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable ; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untravelled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the great trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which — once, twice, and again — he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it,
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE 39
he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested ; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst ; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untravelled avenue! He could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet !
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene — • perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have travelled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments ; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the verandah to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is ! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck ; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon — then all is darkness and silence !
Peyton Farquhar was dead ; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
CTIICKAMAUGA
One sunny autumn afternoon a cliilJ strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control — happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure ; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for many thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest — victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents, and, passing a great sea, had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominance as a heritage.
The child was a boy, aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages, and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilised race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived ; once kindled it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures, and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword,
42 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
though even the eye of his father would hardly have
known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore
bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and,
pausing now and again in the sunny spaces of the
forest, assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures
of aggression and defence that he had been taught
by the engraver's art. Made reckless by the ease
with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to
stay his advance, he committed the common enough
military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous
extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of
a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred
his direct advance against the flying foe who had
crossed with illogical ease. But the intrepid victor
was not to be baffled ; the spirit of the race which
had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in
that small breast and would not be denied. Finding
a place where some boulders in the bed of the stream
lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way
across and fell again upon the rear guard of his
imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.
Now that the battle had been won, prudence
required that he withdraw to his base of operations.
Alas ! like many a mightier conqueror, and like one,
the mightiest, he could not
curb the lust for war, Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
Advancing from the bank of the creek, he sud- denly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy; in the path that he was following,
CHICK AM A UGA 43
bolt upriglit, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, sat a rabbit. With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror — breathless, blind with tears — lost in the forest ! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcomie with fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream, and, still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head ; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedgerows in alarm, a mother's heart was breaking for her missing child.
Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of the eveninsf was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which impelled to action, he struggled through the undergrowth about him and came to a more open ground — on his right the brook, to the
44 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees ; over all the gathering gloom of twilight. A thin ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened and repelled him ; instead of recrossing, in the direction whence he had come, he turned his back upon it and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal — a dogj a pig — he could not name it ; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to their discredit, and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this object — something in the awkwardness of its approach — told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still, and as it came slowly on, gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its sham- bling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts, he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him was alive with them — all moving forward toward the brook.
They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging useless at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They
CHICKAMAUGA 45
did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs, and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their move- ment. They came by dozens and by hundreds ; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepen- ing gloom they extended, and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads ; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.
Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an older observ^er ; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though some of them were unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this — something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and move- ments— reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of.
46 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
tlie dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spec- tacle. He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement — had ridden them so, ' making believe ' they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground as an un- broken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw — from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hang- ing shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The un- natural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child ; the child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it, and took a more serious view of the situation. And so the uncanny multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime — moved forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going — in silence profound, absolute.
Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck the creeping figures and gave
CHICKAMAUGA 47
them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accen- tuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward the growing splendour and moved down the slope with his horrible companions ; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng — not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conform- ing his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before had such a following.
Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader's mind, were coupled no significant associa- tions; an occasional blanket, tightly rolled length- wise, doubled, and the ends bound together with a string ; ia heavy knapsack here, and there a broken musket — such things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the ^ spoor ' of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was t'rodden into mud by the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions ; the ground had been twice passed
48 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
over — in advance and in retreat. A few hours be- fore, these desperate, stricken men, with their more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed the child on every side — had almost trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had fought a battle ; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, ' the thunder of the captains and the shouting.' He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who died to make the glory.
The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole land- scape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapour of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones pro- truding above the surface. But that was blood ; the less desperately wounded had stained them in cross- ing. On them, too, the child now crossed with eager steps ; he was going to the fire. As he stood upon the farther bank, he turned about to look at the companions of his march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had already
CHICKAMAUGA 49
drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces in the flood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads. At this the child's eyes expanded with wonder ; even his hospit- able understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that. After slaking their thirst these men had not the strength to back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They were drowned. In rear of these the open spaces of the forest show^ed the leader as many form- less figures of his grim command as at first ; but not nearly so many were in motion. He waved his cap for their encouragement and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding light — a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.
Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquette with his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation everywhere. In all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he flung in his sword — a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.
E
so IN THE AflDST OF LIFE
Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some out- buildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire planta- tion, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little world swung half around ; the points of the compass were reversed. He re- cognised the blazing building as his own home !
For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman — the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain pro- truded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of grey, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles — the work of a shell !
The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inar- ticulate and indescribable cries — something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey — a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.
A SON OF THE GODS.
A STUDY IN THE HISTORICAL PRESENT TENSE.
A BREEZY day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left and forward; behindj a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open but not venturing into it, long lines of troops halted. The wood is alive with them, and full of confused noises — the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery of artillery gets into position to cover the advance ; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking ; a sound of innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the trees ; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well in front — not altogether exposed — many of them in- tently regarding the crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance. For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has met with a formidable obstacle — the open country. The crest of that gentle hill a mile away has a sinister look ; it says, Beware ! Along it runs a stone wall extending to left and right a great dis- tance. Behind the wall is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather straggling
E 2
52 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
order. Behind tlio trees — what ? It is necessary to know.
Yesterday, and for many days and nights pre- viously, we were fighting somewhere ; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldom knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak the enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the cUhris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the woods beyond.
How curiously we regarded everything ! how odd it all seemed ! Nothing appeared quite familiar ; the most commonplace objects — an old saddle, a splint- ered wheel, a forgotten canteen — everything related something of the mysterious personality of those strange men who had been killing us. The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest him- self of the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth. The smallest vestiges of them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks of them as inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, they appear farther away, and therefore larger than they really are — like objects in a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them. From the edge of the wood leading up the acclivity
A SON OF THE GODS 53
are the tracks of horses and wheels — the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is beaten down by the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed this way in thousands ; they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is significant — it is the difference between retiring and retreating.
That group of horsemen is our commander, his staff and escort. He is facing the distant crest, holding his field-glass against his eyes with both hands, his elbows needlessly elevated ; it is a fashion ; lb seems to dignify the act ; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly he lowers the glass and says a few words to those about him. Two or three aides detach themselves from the group and canter away into the woods, along the lines in each direction. We did not hear his words but we know them : ' Tell General X. to send forward the skirmish line.' Those of us who have been out of place resume our positions ; the men resting at ease straighten themselves, and the ranks are reformed without a command. Some of us staff officers dismount and look at our saddle girths ; those already on the ground remount.
Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the open ground comes a young officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is scarlet. What a fool! No one who has ever been in battle but remembers how naturally every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but has observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such colours are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the
54 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
most astonishing of al] the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to have been devised to increase the death rate.
This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam with bullion — a blue-and- gold edition of the Poetry of War. A wave of derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But how handsome he is ! with what careless grace he sits upon his horse !
He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander and salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly ; he evidently knows him. A brief colloquy between them is going on ; the young man seems to be preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Let us ride a little nearer. Ah ! too late — it is ended. The young officer salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of the hill. He is deathly pale.
A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. Tra-la-la ! Tra-la-la ! The skirmishers halt in their tracks.
Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding at a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head. How glorious ! Gods ! what would we not give to be in his place — with his soul ! He does not draw his • sabre ; his right hand hangs easily at his side. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it
A SON OF THE GODS 55
smartly. The sunsliine rests upon Lis shoulder straps, lovingly, like a visible benediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed upon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel ; ten thousand hearts keep quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed. He is not alone — he draws all souls after him ; we are but ' dead men all.' But we remember that we laughed ! On and on, straight for the hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a look backward. Oh, if he would but turn — if he could but see the love, the adoration, the atonement !
Not a word is spoken ; the populous depths of the forest still murmur with their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe there is silence absolute. The burly commander is an equestrian statue of himself. The mounted staff officers, their field-glasses up, are motionless all. The line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of ' attention,' each man in the attitude in which he was caught by the consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened and impenitent man killers, to whom death in its awfullest forms is a fact familiar to their every-day observation ; who sleep on hills trembling with the thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends — all are watching with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of an act involving the life of one man. Such is the magnetism of courage and devotion.
56 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
If now you should turn your head, you would see a simultaneous movement among the spectators — a start, as if it had received an electric shock — and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you would see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is riding at an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the sudden deflec- tion to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound ; but take this field-glass and you will observe that he is riding towards a break in the wall and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlook the country beyond.
You are not to forget the nature of this man's act ; it is not permitted to you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand, a need- less sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated he is in force on that ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing less than a line of battle ; there is no need of pickets, vedettes, skirmishers, to give warning of our approach ; our attacking lines will be visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground the moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet of rifle bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is there, it would be madness to attack him in front ; he must be manoeuvred out by the imme- morial plan of threatening his line of communication, as necessary to his existence as, to the diver at the bottom of the sea, his air tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there ? There is but one way — some-
A SON OF THE CODS $7
Lody must go and see. The natural and customary thing to do is to send forward a line of skirmishers. But in this case they will answer in the aflSrmative with all their lives ; the enemy, crouching in double ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait until it is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley a half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can accomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratified curiosity ! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase knowledge ! ' Let me pay all,' says this gallant man — this military Christ.
There is no hope except the hope against hope that the crest is clear. True, he might prefer capture to death. So long as he advances the line will not fire —why should it ? He can safely ride into the hostile ranks and become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat his object. It would not answer our question ; it is necessary either that he return unharmed or be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how to act. If captured — why, that might have been done by a half dozen stragglers.
Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect between a man and an army. Our horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of the crest, suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a direction parallel to it. He has caught sight of his antagonist ; he knows all. Some slight advantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line. If he
S8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
were here, he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless ; he must make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him, by compelling the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as possible — which, naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Not a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked and shotted guns, but knows the needs of the situation, the imperativ^e duty of forbearance. Besides, there has been time enough to forbid them all to fire. True, a single rifle shot might drop him and be no great disclosure. But firing is infectious — and see how rapidly he moves, with never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a new direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass ; it seems occurring within pistol shot ; we see all but the enemy, whose presence, whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there is nothing but a black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzags against the slope of a distant hill — so slowly they seem almost to creep.
Now — the glass again — he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, or has gone mad ; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to take it at a leap, hedge and all ! One moment only, and he wheels right about and is speeding like the wind straight down the slope — toward his friends, toward his death ! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to
A SON OF THE GODS 59
right and left. This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle of the rifles reaches us, he is down. No, he recovers his seat ; he has but pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension, of our feelings. And the horse and its rider ? Yes, they are up and away. Away, indeed — they are making directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musk- etry is continuous, and every bullet's target is that courageous heart.
Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind the wall. Another and another — a dozen roll up before the thunder of the explo- sions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears, and the missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary distrac- tion, a passing thought of self.
The dust drifts away. Incredible ! — that en- chanted horse and rider have passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Another moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikes the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again — the man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head. His face is to
6o IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
the enemy. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face, moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward curve. It is a sign to the enemy, to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero's salute to death and history.
Again the spell is broken ; our men attempt to cheer j they are choking with emotion ; they utter hoarse, discordant cries ; they clutch their weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers, without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in full chorus, to right and left as far as we can see ; the distant crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great shot pitch roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are in obedience ; they preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front.
The commander has not moved. He now re- moves his ti eld-glass from his eyes and glances to the right and left. He sees the human current flow- ing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide-waves parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face ; he is thinking. Again he directs his eyes forward ; they slowly traverse that malign and awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. Tra-laAa ! Tra-la-ki ! The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It is repeated
A SON OF THE GODS 6i
by all the bugles of all the subordinate commanders ; the sharp metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance, and penetrate the sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colours move slowly back; the lines face about and sullenly fol- low, bearing their wounded ; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead.
Ah, those many, many needless dead ! That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside — could it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion? Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan?
ONE OF THE MISSING.
Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sher- man's army, then confronting the enemy at and about Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned his back upon a small group of officers, with whom he had been talking in low tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in a forest. None of the men in line behind the works had said a word to him, nor had he so much as nodded to them in pass- ing, but all who saw understood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous duty. Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks ; he was detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon the rolls as an orderly. * Orderly ' is a word covering a multitude of duties. An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant — anything. He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and army regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favour, upon accident. Private Searing, an incom- parable marksman, young — it is surprising how young we all were in those days — hardy, intelligent, and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general
64 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
commanding his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but formed a fraction of the line of the army ; nor was he satisfied to receive his knowledge of his vis'd-vis through the customary channels; he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commander and the collisions of pickets and skir- mishers. Hence Jerome Searing — with his extraor- dinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes and truthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple : to get as near the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.
In a few moments he had arrived at the picket line, the men on duty there lying in groups of from two to four behind little banks of earth scooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their rifles protruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their small defences. The forest ex- tended without a break toward the front, so solemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it be conceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant — a forest formidable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a moment in one of the rifle pits to apprise the men of his intention. Searing crept stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in a dense thicket of underbrush.
' That is the last of him,' said one of the men ; * I wish I had his rifle ; those fellows will hurt some of us with it.'
ONE OF THE MISSING 65
Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and growth to give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his ears took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at the cracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the earth. It was slow work, but not tedious ; the danger made it ex- citing, but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest. His pulse was as regular, his nerves were as steady, as if he were trying to trap a sparrow.
^ It seems a long time,' he thought, ' but I cannot have come very far ; I am still alive.'
He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. A moment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and lay motionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the bushes he had caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay — one of the enemy's rifle pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inch by inch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him, all the while intently regard- ing the hillock of clay. In another moment he was upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward with little attempt at concealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs, whatever they were ; the enemy was gone.
To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon so important a matter. Searing pushed forward across the line of abandoned pits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest,
F
66 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
his eyes vigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of a plantation — one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last years of the war, up- grown with brambles, ugly with broken fences, and desolate with vacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors and windows. After a keen recon- noissance from the safe seclusion of a clump of young pines, Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchard to a small structure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, on a slight elevation, which he thought would enable him to overlook a large scope of country in the direction that he sup- posed the enemy to have taken in withdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of a single room, elevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now little more than a roof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks loosely piled on the ground below or resting on end at various angles, not wholly torn from their fastenings above. The sup- porting posts were themselves no longer vertical. It looked as if the whole edifice would go down at the touch of a finger. Concealing himself in the debris of joists and flooring. Searing looked across the open ground between his point of view and a spur of Kenesaw Mountain, a half mile away. A road leading up and across this spur was crowded with troops — the rear guard of the retiring enemy, their gun barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight. Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his duty to return to his own
ONE OF THE MISSING f>f
command with all possible speed and report his dis- cov^ery. But the grey column of infantry toiling up the mountain road was singularly tempting. His rifle— an ordinary * Springfield,' bu.t fitted with a globe sight and hair trigger — would easily send its ounce and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. That would probably not afiect the duration and result of the war, but it is the business of a soldier to kill. It is also his pleasure if he is a good soldier. Searing cocked his rifle and ' set ' the trigger.
But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the Confederate re- treat to be announced by him. For countless ages events had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern.
Some twenty-five years previously the Power charged with the execution of the work according to the design had provided against that mischance by causing the birth of a certain male child in a little village at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervised its education, directed its desires into a military channel, and in due time made it an oflicer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinite number of favouring influences and their preponderance over an infinite number of oppos- ing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to
F 2
6^ IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
commit a breach of discipline and fly from his native country to avoid punishment. He had been directed to New Orleans (instead of New York), where a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted and promoted, and things were so ordered that he now commanded a Confederate battery some three miles along the line from where Jerome Sear- ing, the Federal scout, stood cocking his rifle. No- thing had been neglected — at every step in the progress of both these men's lives, and in the lives of their ancestors and contemporaries, and of the lives of the contemporaries of their ancestors — the right thing had been done to bring about the desired result. Had anything in all this vast concatenation been overlooked. Private Searing might have fired on the retreating Confederates that morning, and would perhaps have missed. As it fell out, a captain of artillery, having nothing better to do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off", amused himself by sighting a field piece obliquely to his right at what he took to be some Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and discharged it. The shot flew high of its mark.
As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle, and, with his eyes upon the distant Confede- rates, considered where he could plant his shot with the best hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childless mother — perhaps all three, for Private Searing, although he had repeatedly refused pro- motion, was not without a certain kind of ambition—
• ONE OF THE MISSING 69
he heard a rushing sound in the air, like that made by the wings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than he could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust !
Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket guard on that part of the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission, sai with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the faintest sound escaped him ; the cry of a bird, the barking of a squirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines — all were anxiously noted by iis overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in fruiit of his line, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a falling building translated by distance. At the same moment an officer approached him on foot from the rear and saluted.
' Lieutenant,' said the aide, ' the colonel directs
\ uu to move forward your line and feel the enemy if
you find him. If not, continue the advance until
directed to halt. There is reason to think that the
nemyhas retreated.'
The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In a moment the men, apprised
70 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
of their duty by the non-commissioned officers in low tones, had deployed from their rifle pits and were moving forward in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts. The lieutenant mechanically looked at his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes.
When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness, he did not at once understand what had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he opened his eyes. For a wliile he believed that he had died and been buried, and he tried to recall some portions of the burial service. He thought that his wife was kneel- ing upon his grave, adding her weight to that of the earth upon his breast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed his coffin. Unless the children should persuade her to go home, he would not much longer be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. '• I cannot speak to her,' he thought ; ' the dead have no voice; and if I open my eyes I shall get them full of earth.'
He opened his eyes — a great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe of the tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, a high, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate, patternless system of straight lines ; in the centre a bright ring of metal — the whole an immeas- urable distance away — a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and he closed his eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of an insufferable light. A sound was in his ears like the
ONE OF THE MISSING ii
low, rhytlimic thunder of a distant sea breaking in successive waves upon tlie beach, and out of this noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from beyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless under- tone, came the articulate words : ' Jerome Searing, you are caught like a rat in a trap — in a trap, tnip^ trap.'
Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black daik- ness, an infinite tranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood, and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembered all, and, nowise alarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of his enemy, to plan his defence.
He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by a solid beam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able to shrink a little way from it so that it no longer oppressed him, though it was immovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him against a pile of boards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs, slightly parted and straight along the ground, were covered upward to the knees with a mass of debris which towered above his narrow horizon. His head was as rigidly fixed as in a vice ; he could move his eyes, his chin — no more. Only his right arm was partly free. ' You must help us out of this,' he said to it. But he could not get it from under the heavy timber athwart his chest, nor move it outward more than six inches at the elbow.
Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he
72 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
suffer pain. A smart rap on the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurred simultane- ously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system, had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the period of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had probably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not wholly cleared away as he began an intelligent survey of the situa- tion.
With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beam which lay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could he do so. He was unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow beyond that edge of the timber which was nearest his knees ; failing in that, he could not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. The brace that made an angle with it downward and backward prevented him from doing anything in that direction, and between it and his body the space was not half as wide as the length of his forearm. Obvi- ously he could not get his hand under the beam nor over it ; he could not, in fact, toach it at all. Hav- ing demonstrated his inability, he desisted, and began to think if he could reach any of the debris piled upon his legs.
In surveying the mass with a view to determin- ing that point, his attention was arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metal immediately in front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to sur-
ONE OF THE MISSING 73
round some perfectly black sul stance, and it was somewhat more than a half inch in diameter. It sud- denly occurred to his mind that the blackness was simply shadow, and that the ring was in fact the muzzle of his rifle protruding from the pile of debris. He was not long in satisfying himself that this was so — if it was a satisfaction. By closing either eye he could look a little way along the barrel — to the point where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. He could see the one side, with the correspond- ing eye, at apparently the same angle as the other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye. the weapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and vice versa. He was unable tc see the upper surface of the barrel, but could see the under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piece was, in fact, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.
In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that just previously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation was the result, he had cocked the gun and set the trigger so that a touch would discharge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling of uneasiness. But that was as far as possible from fear ; he was a brave man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of rifles from that point of view, and of cannon, too ; and now he recalled, with something like amusement, an incident of his ex- perience at the storming of Missionary Ridge, where, walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from
7*4 /^V THE MIDST OF LIFE
which he had seen a heavy gun throw charge after charge of grape among the assailants, he thought for a moment that the piece had been withdrawn ; he could see nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. What that was he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one of the com- monest incidents in a soldier's life — firearms, too, with malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for. Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, and turned away his eyes.
After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time, he made an ineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage his head, the fixity of which w^as the more annoying from his ignorance of what held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting the powerful muscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that a disturbance of the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle ; how it could have endured what had already befallen it he could not understand, although memory assisted him with various instances in point. One in particular he recalled, in which, in a moment of mental abstraction, he had clubbed his rifle and beaten out another gentleman's brains, observing afterward that the weapon which he had been diligently swinging by the muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock — knowledge of which cir- cumstance would doubtless have cheered his an-
ONE OF THE MISSING 75
tagonist to longer endurance. He had always smiled in recalling that blunder of his * green and salad days ' as a soldier, but now he did not smile. He turned his eyes again to the muzzle of the gun, and for a moment fancied that it had moved ; it seemed somewhat nearer.
Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds of the plantation interested him ; he had not before observed how light and feathery they seemed, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among their branches, where they some- what paled it with their green- above him it appeared almost black. * It will be uncomfortably hot here,' he thought, ' as the day advances. I wonder which way I am looking.'
Judging by such shadows as he could see, he de- cided that his face was due north ; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north — well, that was toward his wife and children.
* Bah ! ' he exclaimed aloud, ' what have they to do with it ? '
He closed his eyes. ' As I can't get out, I may as well go to sleep. The rebels are gone, and some of our fellows are sure to stray out here foraging. They'll find me.'
But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his forehead — a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and more un- comfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone — closed them and it returned. ' The devil ! ' he said
76 JN THE MIDST OF LIFE
irrelevantly, and stared again at the sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of the meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell into pleasant memories of his childhood, played again with his brother and sister, raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks, en- tered the sombre forest beyond, and with timid steps followed the faint path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs before the Dead Man's Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For the first time he observed that the opening of the haunted cavern was encircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished, and left him gazing into the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemed nearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the more sinister for that. He cried out, and, startled by something in his own voice — the note of fear — lied to himself in denial : ' If I don't sing out I may stay here till I die.'
He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gun barrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look for assistance (although he could not see the ground on either side the ruin), and he permitted them to return, obedient to the imperative fascination. If he closed them, it was from weariness, and instantly the poignant pain in his forehead — the prophecy and menace of the bullet — forced him to reopen them.
The tension of nerve and brain was too severe ; nature came to his relief with intervals of uncon-
ONE OF THE MISSING n
sciousness. Reviving from one of these, he became sensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he worked his fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that they were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew the sensation ; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it fall of splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy ; he could not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there were someone to hear them, but he could die * game,' and he would. But if he could only know when to expect the shot !
Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking and scampering about. One of them mounted the pile of debris that held the rifle ; another followed, and another. Searing regarded them at first with indifference, then with friendly interest ; then, as the thought flashed into his be- wildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle, he screamed at them to go away. ' It is no business of yours,' he cried.
The creatures left; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw away his nose, cut his throat — he knew that, but he hoped by that time to be dead.
Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with its black interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and, cons',aut. He felt it
78 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at last its progress was arrested by the wood at- the back of his head. It grew momen- tarily more- insufferable ; he began wantonly beating his lacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horrible ache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular, recurrence, each pulsation sharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt the fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country, of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed away — not a vestige remained. Here, in this confusion of timbers and boards, is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time — each pain an everlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities.
Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formid- able enemy, the strong, resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen ; his eyes protruded ; he trembled in every fibre ; a cold sweat bathed his entire body; he screamed with fear. He was not insane — he was terrified.
In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last a strip of board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with his body, and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space would permit, he could draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it was altogether loosened from the wreckage covering his legs ; he could lift it clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into his mind : perhaps he could wofk it upward^
ONE OF THE MISSING 79
that is to say backward, far enough to lift the end and push aside the rifle ; or, if that were too tightly wedgedj so hold the strip of board as to deflect the bullet. With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring to breathe, lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than ever unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which might perhaps now hasten to improve its waning opportunity. Something at least had been gained ; in the occupation of his mind in this attempt at self-defence he was less sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased to scream. But he was still dreadfully frightened, and his teeth rattled like castanets.
The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged at it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he could, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him, and the end in front was still too far away to clear the pile of debris and reach the muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger- guard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with his right eye. He tried to break the strip with his hand, but had no leverage. Perceiving his defeat, all his terror returned, aug- mented tenfold. The black aperture of the rifle appeared to threaten a sharper and more imminent death in punishment of his rebellion. The track of the bullet through his head ached with an intenser anguish.. .He began to tremble again.
Zo IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clinched his teeth and drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defence ; a new design had shaped itself in his mind — another plan of battle. Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it forward through the wreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressed against the trigger guard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until he could feel that it had cleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust it against the trigger with all his strength ! There was no explosion ; the rifle had been discharged as it dropped from his hand when the building fell. But Jerome Searing was dead.
A line of Federal skirmishers swept across the plantation toward the mountain. They passed on both sides of the wrecked building, observing no- thing. At a short distance in their rear came their commander. Lieutenant Adrian Searing. He casts his eyes curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buried in boards and timbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing is Confederate grey. Its face is yellowish white ; the cheeks are fallen in, the temples sunken, too, with sharp ridges about them, making the forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows the white teeth, rigidly clinched. The hair is heavy with moisture, the face as wet as the dewy grass all about. From his point of view the officer does not
ONE OF THE MISSIXG 8i
observe the rifle ; the man was apparently killed by the fall of the building.
' Dead a week,' said the officer curtly, moving on, mechanically pulling out his watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock and forty minutes.
KILLED AT BESAGA.
The best soldier of our staff was Lieutenant Herman Brayle, one of the two aides-de-camp. I don't remember where the general picked him up ; from some Ohio regiment, 1 think ; none of us had pre- viously known him, and it would have been strange if we had, for no two of us came from the same State, nor even from adjoining States. The general seemed to think that a position on his staff was a distinction that should be so judiciously conferred as not to beget any sectional jealousies and imperil the integrity of that portion of the Union which was still an integer. He would not even choose them from his own command, but by some jugglery at department headquarters obtained them from other brigades. Under such circumstances a man's services had to be very distinguished indeed to be heard of by his family and the friends of his youth ; and ' the speaking trump of fame ' was a trifle hoarse from loquacity, anyhow.
Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in height and of splendid proportions, with the light hair and grey-blue eyes which men similarly gifted
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84 ly THE MIDST OF LIFE
usually find associated with a high order of courage. As he was commonly in full uniform, especially in action, when most officers are content to be less flamboyantly attired, he was a very striking and conspicuous figure. As for the rest, he had a gen- tleman's manners, a scholar's head, and a lion's heart. His age was about thirty.
We all soon came to like Brayle as much as we admired him, and it was with sincere concern that in the engagement at Stone's River — our first action after he joined us— we observed that he had one most objectionable and unsoldierly quality, he was vain of his courage. During all the vicissitudes and mutations of that hideous encounter, whether our troops were fighting in the open cotton fields, in the cedar thickets, or behind the railway embankment, he did not once take cover, except when sternly commanded to do so by the general, who commonly had other things to think of than the lives of his staff officers — or those of his men, for that matter.
In every subsequent engagement while Brayle was with us it w^as the same way. He would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, in a storm of bullets and grape, in the most exposed places — wherever, in fact, duty, requiring him to go, per- mitted him to remain — when, without trouble and with distinct advantage to his reputation for common sense, he might have been in such security ps is possible on a battle field in the brief intervals of personal inaction.
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On foot, from necessity or in deference to his dismounted commander or associates,, bis conduct was the same. He would stand like a rock in the open when officers and men alike had taken to cover; while men older in service and years, higher in rank and of unquestionable intrepidity, were loyally pre- serving behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely precious to their country, this fellow would stand, equally idle, on the ridge, facing in the direction of the sharpest fire.
When battles are going on in open ground it frequently occurs that the opposing lines, confronting one another within a stone's throw for hours, hug the earth as closely as if they loved it. The line officers in their proper places flatten themselves no less, and the field officers, their horses all killed or sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron without a thought of personal dignity.
In such circumstances the life of a staff officer of a brigade is distinctly ' not a happy one,' mainly because of its precarious tenure and the unnerving alternations of emotion to which he is exposed. From a position of that comparative security from which a civilian would ascribe his escape to a * miracle,' h) may be dispatched with an order to some commander of a prone regiment in the front line— a p?iion for the morrent inconspicuous and not a'wiys easy to locate without a deal of search tmang men somewhat preoccupied, and in a din in
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which question and answer alike must be imparted in the sign language. It is customary in such cases to duck the head and scuttle away on a keen run, an object of lively interest to some thousands of admiring marksmen. In returning — well, it is not customary to return.
Brayle's practice was different. He would con- sign his horse to the care of an orderly — he loved his horse — and walk quietly away on his horrible errand with never a stoop of the back, his splendid figure, accentuated by his uniform, holding the eye with a strange fascination. We watched him w4th sus- pended breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our number, an impetuous stammerer, was so jDossessed by his emotion that he shouted at me : —
' I'll b-b-bet you t-two d-d-dollars they d-drop him b-b-fore he g-gets to that d-d-ditch ! '
I did not accept the brutal wager; I thought they would. Let me do justice to a brave man's memory ; in all these needless exposures of life there was no visible bravado nor subsequent narration. In the few instances when some of us had ventured to remonstrate, Brayle had smiled pleasantly and made some light reply, which, however, had not encour- aged a further pursuit of the subject. Once he said : —
* Captain, if ever I come to grief by forgetting your advice, I hope my last moments will be cheered by the sound of your beloved voice breathing into my ear the blessed words, "I told you so." *
KILLED AT RE SAC A 87
We laughed at the captain — just why we could probably not have explained — and that afternoon when he was shot to rags from an ambuscade Brayle remained by the body for some time, adjusting the limbs with needless care — there in the middle of a road swept by gusts of grape and canister! It is easy to condemn this kind of thing, and not very difficult to refrain from imitation, but it is impossible not to respect, and Brayle was liked none the less for the weakness which had so heroic an expression. We wished he were not a fool, but he went on that way to the end, sometimes hard hit, but always re- turning to duty as good as new.
Of course, it came at last ; he who defies the law of probabilities challenges an adversary that is never beaten. It was at Resaca, in Georgia, during the movement that resulted in the capture of Atlanta. In front of our brigade the enemy's line of earth- works ran through open fields along a slight crest. At each end of this open ground we were close up to them in the woods, but the clear ground we could not hope to occupy until night, when the darkness would enable us to burrow like moles and throw up earth. At this point our line was a quarter-mile away in the edge of a wood. Eoughly, we formed a semicircle, the enemy's fortified line being the chord of the arc.
' Lieutenant, go tell Colonel Ward to work up as close as he can get cover, and not to waste much
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ammunition in unnecessary firing. You may leave your horse/
When the general gave this direction we were in the fringe of the forest, near the right extremity of the arc. Colonel Ward was at the left. The sug- gestion to leave the horse obviously enough meant that Brayle was to take the longer line, through the woods and among the men. Indeed, the suggestion was needless ; to go by the short route meant abso- lutely certain failure to deliver the message. Before anybody could interpose, Brayle had cantered lightly into the field and the enemy's works were in crack- ling conflagration.
' Stop that d d fool ! ' shouted the general.
A private of the escort, with more ambition than brains, spurred forward to obey, and within ten yards left himself and horse dead on the field of honour.
Brayle was beyond recall, galloping easily along parallel to the enemy and less than two hundred yards distant. He was a picture to see ! His hat had been blown or shot from his head, and his long blonde hair rose and fell with the motion of his horse. He sat erect in the saddle, holding the reins lightly in his left hand, his right hanging carelessly at his side. An occasional glimpse of his handsome profile as he turned his head one way or the other proved that the interest which he took in what was going on was natural and without affectation.
The picture was intensely dramatic, but in no
KILLED AT RES AC A 89
degree theatrical. Successive scores of rifles spat at him viciously as he came within range, and our own line in the edge of the timber broke out in visible and audible defence. No longer regardful of them- selves or their orders, our fellows sprang to their feet, and, swarming into the open, sent broad sheets of bullets against the blazing crest of the offending works, which poured an answering fire into their unprotected groups with deadly eftect. The artillery on both sides joined the battle, punctuating the rattle and roar with deep earth-shaking explosions, and tearing the air with storms of screaming grape, which, from the enemy's side, splintered the trees and spattered them with blood, and from ours defiled the smoke of his arms with banks and clouds of dust from his parapet.
My attention had been for a moment averted to the general combat, but now, glancing down the unobscured avenue between these two thunder- clouds, I saw Brayle, the cause of the carnage. In- visible now from either side, and equally doomed by friend and foe, he stood in the shot-swept space, motionless, his face toward the enemy. At some little distance lay his horse. I instantly divined the cause of his inaction.
As topographical engineer I had, early in the day, made a hasty examination of the ground, and now remembered that at that point was a deep and sinuous gully, crossing half the field from the enemy's line, its general course at right angles to it. From
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'vliere we were it was invisible, and Brayle had ev'dently not known of it. Clearly, it was impassable. Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute security if he had chosen to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought in his favour. He could not go forward, he would not turn back; he stood awaiting death. It did not keep him long waiting.
By some mysterious coincidence, almost instan- taneously as he fell, the firing ceased, a few desultory shots at long intervals serving rather to accentuate than break the silence. It was as if both sides had suddenly repented of their profitless crime. Four stretcher-bearers, following a sergeant with a white flag, soon afterward moved unmolested into the field, and made straight for Brayle's body. Several Confederate oflScers and men came out to meet them, and, with uncovered heads, assisted them to take up their sacred burden. As it was borne away toward us we heard beyond the hostile works, fifes and a muffled drum — a dirge. A generous enemy honoured the fallen brave.
Amongst the dead man's effects was a soiled Russia-leather pocket-book. In the distribution of mementoes of our friend, which the general, as administrator, decreed, this fell to me.
A year after the close of the war, on my way to California, I opened and idly inspected it. Out of an overlooked compartment fell a letter without envelope or address. It was in a woman's hand-
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writing, and began with words of endearment, but no name.
It had the following date line : ' San Francisco, Cal., July 9, 1862/ The signature was 'Darling,' in marks of quotation. Incidentally, in the body of the text, the writer's full name was given — Marian Mendenhall.
The letter showed evidence of cultivation and good breeding, but it was an ordinary love letter, if a love letter can be ordinary. There was not much in it, but there was something. It was this :
* Mr. Winters, whom I shall always hate for it, has been telling that at some battle in Virginia, where he got his hurt, you were seen crouching behind a tree. I think he wants to injure you in my regard, which he knows the story would do if I believed it. I could bear to hear of my soldier lover's death, but not of his cowardice.'
These were the words which on that sunny afternoon, in a distant region, had slain a hundred men. Is woman weak ?
One evening I called on Miss Mendenhall to return the letter to her. I intended, also, to tell her what she had done — but not that she did it. I found her in a handsome dwelling on Rincon Hill. She was beautiful, well bred — in a word, charming.
' You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle,' I said, rather abruptly. * You know, doubtless, that he fell in battle. Among his effects was found this letter
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from you. My errand Lere is to place it in your hands.'
She mechanically took the letter, glanced through it with deepening colour, and then, looking at me with a smile, said :
* It is very good of you, though I am sure it was hardly worth while.' She started suddenly, and changed colour. ' This stain,' she said, ' is it — surely it is not — '
* Madam,' I said, 'pardon me, but that is the blood of the truest and bravest heart that ever beat.'
She hastily flung the letter on the blazing coals. ' Ugh ! I cannot bear the sight of blood ! ' she said. ' How did he die ? '
I had involuntarily risen to rescue that scrap of paper, sacred even to me, and now stood partly behind her. As slie asked the question, she turned her face about and slightly upward. The light of the burning letter was reflected in her eyes, and touched her cheek with a tinge of crimson like the stain upon its page. I had never seen anything so beautiful as this detestable creature.
' He was bitten by a snake,' I replied.
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH
* Do you think, colonel, that your brave Coulter would like to put one of his guns in here?' the general asked.
He was apparently not altogether serious ; it certainly did not seem a place where any artillerist, however brave, would like to put a gun. The colonel thought that possibly his division commander meant good-humouredly to intimate that Captain Coulter's courage had been too highly extolled in a recent conversation between them.
* General,' he replied, warmly, ^ Coulter would like to put a gun anywhere within reach of those people,' with a motion of his hand in the direction of the enemy.
* It is the only place,* said the general. He was serious, then.
The place was a depression, a * notch,' in the sharp crest of a hill. It was a pass, and through it ran a turnpike, which, reaching this highest point in its course by a sinuous ascent through a thin forest, made a similar, though less steep, descent toward the enemy. For a mile to the left and a mile to the
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riglit tlie ridge, tlioiigli occupied by Federal infantry lying close behind the sharp crest, and appearing as if held in place by atmospheric pressure, was inac- cessible to artillery. There was no place but the bottom of the notch, and that was barely wide enough for the roadbed. From the Confederate side this point was commanded by two batteries posted on a slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and a half-mile away. All the guns but one were masked by the trees of an orchard ; that one — it seemed a bit of impudence — was directly in front of a rather grandiose building, the planter's dwelling. The gun was safe enough in its exposure — but only because the Federal infantry had been forbidden to fire. Coulter's Notch — it came to be called so — was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a place where one would ' like to put a gun.'
Three or four dead horses lay there, sprawling in the road, three or four dead men in a trim row at one side of it, and a little back, down the hill. All but one were cavalrymen belonging to the Federal advance. One was a quartermaster. The general commanding the division, and the colonel command- ing the brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had ridden into the notch to have a look at the enemy's guns — which had straightway obscured themselves in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly profit- able to be curious about guns which had the trick of the cuttlefish, and the season of observation was brief. At its conclusion — a short remove backward
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 95
from where ifc began — occurred the conversation ah-eady partly reported. ' It is tlie only place/ the general repeated thoughtfully, ' to get at them.'
The colonel looked at him gravely. * There is room for but one gun. General — one against twelve.'
' That is true — for only one at a time/ said the commander with something like, yet not altogether like, a smile. * But then, your brave Coulter— a whole battery in himself/
The tone of irony was now unmistakable. It angered the colonel, but he did not know what to say. The spirit of military subordination is not favourable to retort, nor even deprecation. At this moment a young officer of artillery came riding slowly up the road attended by his bugler. It was Captain Coulter. He could not have been more than twenty-three years of age. He was of medium height, but very slender and lithe, sitting his horse with something of the air of a civilian. In face he was of a type singularly unlike the men about him ; thin, high- nosed, grey-eyed, with a slight blonde moustache, and long, rather straggling hair of the same colour. There was an apparent negligence in his attire. His cap was worn with the visor a trifle askew ; his coat was buttoned only at the sword belt, showing a considerable expanse of white shirt, tolerably clean for that stage of the campaign. But the negligence was all in his dress and bearing ; in his face was a look of intense interest in his surroundings. His grey eyes, which seemed occasionally to strike right
96 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
and leffc across the landscape, like searcli-liglits, were for the most part fixed upon the sky beyond the Notch ; until he should arrive at the summit of the roadj there was nothing else in that direction to see. As he came opposite his division and brigade com- manders at the roadside he saluted mechanically and was about to pass on. Moved by a sudden impulse, the colonel signed him to halt.
* Captain Coulter,' he said, ' the enemy has twelve pieces over there on the next ridge. If I rightly understand the general, he directs that you bring up a gun and engage them.'
There was a blank silence; the general looked stolidly at a distant regiment swarming slowly up the hill through rough undergrowth, like a torn and draggled cloud of blue smoke ; the captain appeared not to have observed him. Presently the captain spoke, slowly and with apparent effort : —
* On the next ridge, did you say, sir ? Are the guns near the house ? '
* Ah, you have been over this road before ! Directly at the house.'
' And it is — necessary — to engage them ? The order is imperative ? '
His voice was husky and broken. He was visibly paler. The colonel was astonished and mortified. He stole a glance at the commander. In that set, immobile face was no sign ; it was as hard as bronze. A moment later the general rode away, followed by his staff and escort. The colonel.
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 97
humiliated and indignant, was about to or.ler Captain Coulter into arrest, when the latter spoke a few words in a low tone to his bustler, saluted, and rode straight forward into the Notch, where, pres- ently, at the summit of the road, his field-glass at his eyes, he showed against the sky, he and his horse, sharply defined and motionless as an equestrian statue. The bugler had dashed down the road in the opposite direction at headlong speed and disappeared behind a wood. Presently his bugle was heard sing- ing in the cedars, and in an incredibly short time a single gun with its caisson, each drawn by six horses and manned by its full complement of gunners, came bounding and banging up the grade in a storm of dust, unlimbered under cover, and was run forward by hand to the fatal crest among the dead horses. A gesture of the captain's arm, some strangely agile movements of the men in loading, and almost before the troops along the way had ceased to hear the rattle of the wheels, a great white cloud sprang forward down the slope, and with a deafening report the affair at Coulter's Notch had begun.
It is not intended to relate in detail the progress and incidents of that ghastly contest — a contest without vicissitudes, its alternations only different degrees of despair. Almost at the instant when Captain Coulter's gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answering clouds rolled upward from among the trees about the plantation house, a deep multiple
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98 hY THE MIDSr OF LIFE
report roared back like a broken echo, and tlience- forth to the end the Federal cannoneers fought their hopeless battle in an atmosphere of living iron whose thoughts were lightnings and whose deeds were death.
Unwilling to see the efforts which he could not aid and the slaughter which he could not stay, the colonel had ascended the ridge at a point a quarter of a mile to the left, whence the Notch, itself invisible but pushing up successive masses of smoke, seemed the crater of a volcano in thundering erup- tion. With his glass he watched the enemy's guns, noting as he could the effects of Coulter's fire — if Coulter still lived to direct it. He saw that the Federal gunners, ignoring the enemy's pieces, whose position could be determiued by their smoke only, gave their whole attention to the one which main- tained its place in the open — the lawn in front of the house, with which it was accurately in line. Over and about that hardy piece the shells exploded at intervals of a few seconds. Some exploded in the house, as could be seen by thin ascensions of smoke from the breached roof. Figures of prostrate men and horses were plainly visible.
* If our fellows are doing such good work with a single gun,' said the colonel to an aide who happened to be nearest, ' they must be suffering like the devil from twelve. Go down and present the commander of that piece with my congratulations on the accuracy of his fire.'
Turning to his adjutant-general he said, *Pid
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 99
you observe Coulter's damned reluctance to obey orders ? '
' Yes, sir, I did.'
* Well, say nothing about it, please. I don't think the general will care to make any accusations. He will probably have enough to do in explaining his own connection with this uncommon way of amusing the rear guard of a retreating enemy.'
A young officer approached from below, climbing breathless up the acclivity. Almost before he had saluted he gasped out : —
' Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Harmon to say that the enemy's guns are within easy reach of our rifles, and most of them visible from various points along the ridge.'
The brigade commander looked at him wivhout a trace of interest in his expression. ^ I know it,' he said quietly.
The young adjutant was visibly embarrassed.
* Colonel Harmon would like to have permission to silence those guns,' he stammered.
' So should I,' the colonel said in the same tone.
* Present my compliments to Colonel Harmon and say to him that the general's orders not to fire are still in force.'
The adjutant saluted and retired. The colonel ground his heel into the earth and turned to look again at the enemy's guns.
' Colonel,' said the adjutant-general, ' I don't know that I ought to say janything, but there is
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loo IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
something wrong in all this. Do you happen to know that Captain Coulter is from the South ? '
* No ; teas he, indeed ? '
*I heard that last summer the division which the general then commanded was in the vicinity of Coulter's home — camped there for weeks, and '
* Listen ! ' said the colonel, interrupting with an upward gesture. ' Do you hear that ? '
* That ' was the silence of the Federal gun. The staff, the orderlies, the lines of infantry behind the crest — all had ' heard,' and were looking curiously in the direction of the crater, whence no smoke now ascended except desultory cloudlets from the enemy's shells. Then came the blare of a bugle, a faint rattle of wheels ; a minute later the shai-p reports recommenced with double activity. The demolished gun had been replaced with a sound one.
'Yes,* said the adjutant-general, resuming his narrative, 'the general made the acquaintance of Coulter's family. There was trouble — I don't know the exact nature of it— something about Coulter's wife. She is a red-hot Secessionist, as they all are, except Coulter himself, but she is a good wife and high-bred lady. There was a complaint to army headquarters. The general was transferred to this division. It is odd that Coulter's battery should afterward have been assigned to it.'
The colonel had risen from the rock upon which they had been sitting. His eyes were blazing with a generous indignation.
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH loi
' See here, Morrison,' said he, looking his gossip- ing staff oflficer straight in the face, ' did you get that story from a gentleman or a liar ? '
* I don't want to say how I got it, Colonel, unless it is necessary ' — he was blushing a trifle — ' but I'll stake my life upon its truth in the main.'
The colonel turned toward a small knot of officers some distance away. * Lieutenant Williams ! ' he shouted.
One of the officers detached himself from the group, and, coming forward, saluted, saying : * Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you had been in- formed. Williams is dead down there by the gun. What can I do, sir ? '
Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had had the pleasure of conveying to the officer in ch''r<re of the gun his brigade commander's congratulations.
* Go,' said the colonel, ' and direct the with- drawal of that gun instantly. Hold ! I'll go myself.*
He strode down the declivity toward the rear of the Notch at a break-neck pace, over rocks and through brambles, followed by his little retinue in tumultuous disorder. At the foot of the declivity they mounted their waiting animals and took to the road at a lively trot, round a bend and into the Notch. The spectacle which they encountered there was appalling.
Within that defile, barely broad enough for a single gun, were piled the wrecks of no fewer than four. They had noted the silencing of only the last
I02 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
one disabled — there had been a lack of men to re- place it quickly. The d(i\)ris lay on both sides of the road ; the men had managed to keep an open way between, through which the fifth piece was now firing. The men ? — they looked like demons of the pit! All were hatless, all stripped to the waist, their reeking skins black with blotches of powder and spattered with gouts of blood. They worked like madmen, with rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. They set their swollen shoulders and bleed- ing hands against the wheels at each recoil and heaved the heavy gun back to its place. There were no commands ; in that awful environment of whooping shot, exploding shells, shrieking frag- ments of iron, and flying splinters of wood, none could have been heard. Officers, if officers there were, were indistinguishable ; all worked together — - each while he lasted — governed by the eye. When the gun was sponged, it was loaded ; when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel observed something new to his military experience — something horrible and unnatural : the gun was bleeding at the mouth ! In temporary default of water, the man sponging had dipped his sponge in a pool of liis comrades' blood. In all this work there was no clashing ; the duty of the instant was obvious. When one fell, another, looking a trifle cleaner, seemed to rise from the earth in the dead man's tracks, to fall in his turn. With the ruined guns lay the ruined men — alongside the wreckage, under it and atop of it ; and
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 103
back down the road — a ghastly procession ! — crept on hands and knees such of the wounded as were able to move. The colonel — he had compassionately sent his cavalcade to the right about — had to ride over those who were entirely dead in order not to crush those who were partly alive. Into that hell he tranquilly held his way, rode np alongside the gun, and, in the obscurity of the last discharge, tapped upon the cheek the man holding the rammer, who straightway fell, thinking himself killed. A fiend seven times damned sprang out of the smoke to take his place, but paused and gazed up at the mounted officer with an unearthly regard, his teeth flashing between his black lips, his eyes, fierce and expanded, burning like coals beneath his bloody brow. The colonel made an authoritative gesture and pointed to the rear. The fiend bowed in token of obedience. It was Captain Coulter.
Simultaneously with the colonel's arresting sign, silence fell upon the whole field of action. The pro- cession of missiles no longer streamed into that defile of death; the enemy also had ceased firing. His army had been gone for hours, and the com- mander of his rear guard, who had held his position perilously long in hope to silence the Federal fire, at that strange moment had silenced his own. ^ I was not aware of the breadth of my authority,' thought the colonel, facetiously, riding forward to the crest to see what had really happened.
An hour later his brigade was in bivouac on the
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enemy*s ground, and its idlers were examining, with something of awe, as the faithful inspect a saint's relics, a score of straddling dead horses and three disabled guns, all spiked. The fallen men had been carried away ; their crushed and broken bodies would have given too great satisfaction.
Naturally, the colonel established himself and his military family in the plantation house. It was somewhat shattered, but it was better than the open air. The furniture was greatly deranged and broken. The walls and ceilings were knocked away here and there, and there was a lingering odour of powder smoke everywhere. The beds, the closets of women's clothing, the cupboards were not greatly damaged. The new tenants for a night made themselves com- fortable, and the practical effacement of Coulter's battery supplied them with an interesting topic.
During supper that evening an orderly of the escort showed himself into the dining room and asked permission to speak to the colonel.
* What is it, Barbour ? ' said that officer plea- santly, having overheard the request.
* Colonel, there is something wrong in the cellar ; I don't know what — somebody there. I was down there rummaging about.'
*I will go down and see,' said a staff officer, rising.
' So will I,' the colonel said ; * let the others remain. Lead on, orderly.'
They took a candle from the table and descended
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 105
the cellar stairs, the orderly in visible trepidation. The candle made but a feeble light, but presently, as they advanced, its narrow circle • of illumination revealed a human figure seated on the ground against the black stone wall which they were skirting, its knees elevated, its head bowed sharply forward. The face, which should have been seen in profile, was invisible, for the man was bent so far forward that his long hair concealed it ; and, strange to relate, the beard, of a much darker hue, fell in a great tangled mass and lay along the ground at his feet. They involuntarily paused; then the colonel, taking the candle from the orderly's shaking hand, approached the man and attentively considered him. The long dark beard was the hair of a woman — dead. The dead woman clasped in her arms a dead babe. Both were clasped in the arms of the man, pressed against his breast, against his lips. There was blood in the hair of the woman ; there was blood in the hair of the man. A yard away lay an infant's foot. It was near an irregular depression in the beaten earth which formed the cellar's floor — a fresh . excavation with a convex bit of iron, having jagged edges, visible in one of the sides. The colonel held the light as high as he could. The floor of the room above was broken through, the splinters pointing at all angles downward. ' This casemate is not bomb- proof,' said the colonel gravely ; it did not occur to him that his summing up of the matter had any levity in it.
lo6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
They stood about the group awhile in silence; the staff officer was thinking of his unfinished supper, the orderly of what might possibly be in one of the casks on the other side of the cellar. Suddenly the man, whom they had thought dead, raised his head and gazed tranquilly into their faces. His com- plexion was coal black ; the cheeks were apparently tattooed in irregular sinuous lines from the eyes downward. The lips, too, were white, like those of a stage negro. There was blood upon his forehead.
The staff officer drew back a pace, the orderly two paces.
* What are you doing here, my man ? ' said the colonel, unmoved. -
' This house belongs to me, sir,' was the reply, civilly delivered.
* To you ? Ah, I see ! And these ? '
* My wife and child. I am Captain Coulter.'
A TOUGH TUS8LK
OxE night in the autumn of 1861 a man sat alone in the heart of a forest in Western Virginia. The region was then, and still is, one of the wildest on the continent — the Cheat Mountain country. There was no lack of people close at hand, however ; within two miles of where the man sat was the now silent camp of a whole Federal brigade. Somewhere about — it might be still nearer — was a force of the enemy, the numbers unknown. It was this uncer- tainty as to its numbers and position that accounted for the man's presence in that lonely spot ; he was a young officer of a Federal infantry regiment, and his business there was to guard his sleeping comrades in the camp against a surprise. He was in command of a detachment of men constituting a picket guard. These men he had stationed just at nightfall in an irregular line, determined by the nature of the ground, several hundred yards in front of where he now sat. The line ran through the forest, among the rocks and laurel thickets, the men fifteen or twenty paces apart, all in concealment and under injunction of strict silence and unremitting vigilance. In four
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hours, if nothing occurred, they would be relieved by a fresh detachment from the reserve now resting in care of its captain some distance away to the left and rear. Before stationing his men the young oflScer of whom we are speaking had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot at which he would be found in case it should be necessary to consult him, or if his presence at the front line should be required.
It was a quiet enough spot — the fork of an old wood road, on the two branches of which, prolonging themselves deviously forward in the dim moonlight, the sergeants were themselves stationed, a few pacea in rear of the line. If driven sharply back by a sudden onset of the enemy — and pickets are not ex- pected to make a stand after firing — the men would come into the converging roads, and, naturally fol- lowing them to their point of intersection, could be rallied and ' formed.' In his small way the young lieutenant was something of a strategist ; if Napoleon had planned as intelligently at Waterloo, he would have won the battle and been overthrown later.
Second Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was a brave and efiicient officer, young and comparatively inex- perienced as he was in the business of killing his fellow-men. He had enlisted in the very first days of the war as a private, with no military knowledge whatever, had been made first sergeant of his com- pany on account of his education and engaging manner, and had been lucky enough to lose his captain by a Confederate bullet; in the resulting
A TOUGH TUSSLE 109
promotions he had got a commission. He had been in several engagements, such as they were — at Philippij Eich Mountain, Carrick's Ford and Green- brier— and had borne himself v/ith such gallantry as to attract the attention of his superior officers. The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, h\^\\\ eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always in- tolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities — his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence — was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not pictur- esque, it had no tender and solemn side — a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and sugges- tions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter.
Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants, and retired to his station, he seated himself on a log, and, with senses all alert, began his vigil. For greater ease he loosened his sword belt, and, taking
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his heavy revolver from his holster, laid it on the log beside him. He felt very comfortable, though he hardly gave the fact a thought, so intently did he listen for any sound from the front which might have a menacing significance — a shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, in- visible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is — how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees groujo themselves differently ; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle — ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions : notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the
A TOUGH TUSSLE ill
dead leaves — it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may- be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? — what the low, alarmed twittering in that bushfiil of birds ? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live !
Surrounded at a little distance by armed and watchful friends, Byring felt utterly alone. Yield- ing himself to the solemn and mysterious spirit of the time and place, he had forgotten the nature of his connection with the visible and audible aspects and phases of the night. The forest was boundless ; men and the habitations of men did not exist. The uni- verse was one primeval mystery of darkness, without form and void, himself the sole dumb questioner of its eternal secret. Absorbed in the thoughts born of this mood, he suffered the time to slip away unnoted. Meantime the infrequent patches of white light lying amongst the undergrowth had undergone changes of size, form, and place. In one of them near by, just at the roadside, his eye fell upon an object which he had not previously observed. It was almost before his face as he sat; he could have sworn that it had not before been there. It was partly covered in shadow, but he could see that it was a human figure. Instinctively he adjusted tho
112 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
clasp of his sword belt and laid hold of his pistol — again he was in a world of war, by occupation an assassin.
The figure did not move. Rising, pistol in hand, he approached. The figure lay upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but standing above it and looking down upon the face, he saw that it was a dead body. He shuddered and turned from it with a feeling of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat upon the log, and, forgetting military prudence, struck a match and lit a cigar. In the sudden blackness that followed the extinction of the flame he felt a sense of relief; he could no longer see the object of his aversion. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes set in that direction until it appeared again with growing distinctness. It seemed to have moved a trifle nearer.
*Damn the thing!' he muttered. *What does it want ? '
It did not appear to be in need of anything but a soul.
Byring turned away his eyes and began hum- ming a tune, but he broke off in the middle of a bar and looked at the dead man. Its presence annoyed him, though he could hardly have had a quieter neighbour. He was conscious, too, of a vague, in- definable feeling which was new to him. It was not fear, but rather a sense of the supernatural — in which he did not at all believe.
* I have inherited it,' he said to himself. * I
A TOUGH TUSSLE 113
suppose it will requii-e a thousand years — perhaps
ten thousand — for humanity to outgrow this feeling.
Where and when did it originate?' Away back,
probably, in what is called the cradle of the human
race — the plains of Central Asia. What we inherit
as a superstition our barbarous ancestors must have
held as a reasonable conviction. Doubtless they
believed themselves justified by facts whose nature
we cannot even conjecture in tliinking a dead body
a malign thing endowed with some strange power
of mischief, with perhaps a will and a purpose to
exert it. Possibly they had some awful form of
religion of which that was one of the chief doctrines,
sedulously taught by their priesthood, just as ours
teach the immortality of the soul. As the Aryan
moved westward to and through the Caucasus passes
and spread over Europe, new conditions of life must
have resulted in the formulation of new religions.
The old belief in the malevolence of the dead body
was lost from the creeds, and even perished from
tradition, but it left its heritage of terror, which is
transmitted from generation to generation — is as
much a part of us as our blood and bones.'
In following out his thought he had forgotten that which suggested it ; but now his eye fell again upon the corpse. The shadow had now altogether uncovered it. He saw the sharp profile, the chin in the air, the whole face, ghastly white in the moonlight. The clothing was grey, the uniform of a Confederate soldier. The coat and waistcoat,
I
114 IN Tim MIDST OF LIFE
unbuttoned, had fallen away on eacli side, exposing the white shirt. The chest seemed unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen had sunk in, leaving a sharp projection at the line of the lower ribs. The arms were extended, the left knee was thrust upward. The whole posture impressed Byring as having been studied with a view to the horrible.
*Bah!' he exclaimed; *he was an actor — he knows how to be dead.'
He drew away his eyes, directing them resolutely along one of the roads leading to the front, and resumed his philosophising where he had left off.
' It may be that our Central Asian ancestors had not the custom of burial. In that case it is easy to understand their fear of the dead, who really were a menace and an evil. They bred pestilences. Children were taught to avoid the places where they lay, and to run away if by inadvertence they came near a corpse. I think, indeed, I'd better go away from this chap.*
He half rose to do so, then remembered that he told his men in front, and the officer in the rear who was to relieve him, that he could at any time be found at that spot. It was a matter of pride, too. If he abandoned his post, he feared they would think he feared the corpse. He was no coward, and he was not going to incur anybody's ridicule. So he again seated himself, and, to prove his courage, looked boldly at the body. The right arm — the one farthest from him — was now in shadow. He could
A TOUGH TUSSLE 115
barely see tlie liand wliicli, lie had before observed, lay at the root of a clump of laurel. There had been no change, a fact which gave him a certain comfort, he could not have said why. He did not at once remove his eyes ; that which we do not wish to see has a strange fascination, sometimes irresistible. Of the woman who covers her face with her hands, and looks between the fingers, let ib be said that the wits have dealt with her not altogether justly.
Byring suddenly became conscious of a pain in his right hand. He withdrew his eyes from his enemy and looked at it. He was grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so tightly that it hurt him. He observed, too, that he was leaning forward in a strained attitude — crouching like a gladiator ready to spring at the throat of an antagonist. His teeth were clenched, and ho was breathing hard. This matter was soon set right, and as his muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath, he felt keenly enough the ludicrousness of the incident. It affected him to laughter. Heavens ! what sound was that ? — what mindless devil was uttering an unholy glee in mock- ery of human merriment ? He sprang to his feet and looked about him, not recognising his own laugh.
He could no longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice ; he was thoroughly frightened ! He would have run from the spot, but his legs refused their office ; they gave way be- neath him, and he sat again upon the log, violently
I 2
Ii6 IN THE MIDST OF II FE
trembling. His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill pe^-spiration. He could not even cry out. Distinctly he heard behind him a stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and dared not look over his shoulder. Had the soulless living joined forces with the soulless dead ? — was it an animal ? Ah, if he could but be assured of that ! But by no effort of will could he now unfix his gaze from the face of the dead man.
I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a brave and intelligent man. But what would you have ? Shall a man cope, single-handed, with so monstrous an alliance as that of night and solitude and silence and the dead ? — while an incalculable host of his own ancestors shriek into the ear of his spirit their coward counsel, sing their doleful death-songs in his heart and disarm his very blood of all its iron ? The odds are too great — courage was not made for such rough use as that.
One sole conviction now had the man in posses- sion: that the body had moved. It lay nearer to the edge of its plot of light — there could be no doubt of it. It had also moved its arms, for, look, they are both in the shadow ! A breath of cold air struck Byring full in the face ; the branches of trees above him stirred and moaned. A strongly-defined shadow passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half obscured. The horrible thing was visibly moving. At that moment a single shot rang out upon the picket line — a lone-
A TOUGH TUSSLE 117
lier and louder, thougli more distant, shot than ever had been heard by mortal ear ! It broke the spell of that enchanted man ; it slew the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering host from Central Asia, and released his modern manhood. With a cry like that of some great bird pouncing upon its prey, he sprang forward, hot-hearted for action !
Shot after shot now came from the front. There were shoutings and confusion, hoof beats and desultory cheers. Away to the rear, in the sleeping camp, was a singing of bugles and a grumble of drums. Pushing through the thickets on either side the roads came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, firing backward at random as they ran. A straggling group that had followed back one of the roads, as instructed, suddenly sprang away into the bushes as half a hundred horsemen thundered by them, striking wildly with their sabres as they passed. At headlong speed these mounted madmen shot past the spot whore By ring had sat, and vanished round an angle of the road, shouting and firing their pistols. A moment later there was a roar of musketry, followed by dropping shots — they had encountered the reserve guard in line ; and back they came in dire confusion, with here and there an empty saddle and many a maddened horse, bullet- stung, snorting and plunging with pain. It was all over — ^ an affair of outposts.'
The line was re-established with fresh men, the roll called, the stragglers were reformed. The
Ii8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Federal commander, with a part of his staff, imper- fectly clad, appeared upon the scene, asked a few questions, looked exceedingly wise, and retired. After standing at arms for an hour, the brigade in camp ' swore a prayer or two ' and went to bed.
Early the next morning a fatigue party, com- manded by a captain and accompanied by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead and wounded. At the fork of the road, a little to one side, they found two bodies lying close together — that of a Federal officer and that of a Confederate private. The officer had died of a sword-thrust through the heart, but not, apparently, until he had inflicted upon his enemy no fewer than five dreadful wounds. The dead officer lay on his face in a pool of blood, the weapon still in his breast. They turned him on his back and the surgeon removed it,
' Gad ! ' said the captain — * it is Byring ! ' — adding, with a glance at the other, * They had a tough tussle.'
The surgeon was examining the sword. It was that of a line officer of Federal infantry — exactly like the one worn by the captain. It was, in fact, Byring's own. The only other weapon discovered was an undischarged revolver in the dead officer's belt.
The surgeon laid down the sword and approached the other body. It was frightfully gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood. He took hold of the left foot and tried to straighten the leg. In the
A TOUGH TUSSLE 119
effort the body was displaced. The dead do not wish to be moved when comfortable — it protested with a faint, sickening odour.
The surgeon looked at the captain. The captain looked at the surgeon.
. \
TUB COUP BE GRACE
The figliting had been hard and continuous, tliat was attested by all the senses. The very taste of battle was in the air. All was now over ; it re- mained only to succour the wounded and bury the dead — to * tidy up a bit,' as the humorist of a burying squad put it. A good deal of ' tidying up ' was required. As far as one could see through the forest, between the splintered trees, lay wrecks of men and horses. Among them moved the stretcher- bearers, gathering and carrying away the few who showed signs of life. Most of the wounded had died of exposure while the right to minister to their wants was in dispute. It is an army regulation that the wounded must wait ; the best way to care for them is to win the battle. It must be confessed that victory is a distinct advantage to a man requiring attention, but many do not live to avail themselves of it.
The dead were collected in groups of a dozen or a score, and laid side by side in rows while the trenches were dug to receive them. Some, found at too great a distance from these rallying points, were
122 IN THE MIDST OF IJFE
buried where they lay. There was little attempt at identification, though in most cases, the burying parties being detailed to glean the same ground which they had assisted to reap, the names of the victorious dead were known and listed. The enemy's fallen had to be content with counting. But of that they got enough ; many of them were counted several times, and the total, as given in the official report of the victorious commander, denoted rather a hope than a result.
At some little distance from the spot where one of the burying parties had established its ^ bivouac of the dead,' a man in the uniform of a Federal officer stood leaning against a tree. From his feet upward to his neck his attitude was that of weariness reposing ; but he turned his head uneasily from side to side ; his mind was apparently not at rest. He was perhaps uncertain in what direction to go ; he was not likely to remain long where he was, for already the level rays of the setting sun struggled redly through the open spaces of the wood, and the weary soldiers were quitting their task for the day. He would hardly make a night of it alone there among the dead. Nine men in ten whom you meet after a battle inquire the way to some fraction of the army — as if anyone could know. Doubtless this officer was lost. After resting himself a moment, he would follow one of the retiring burial squads.
When all were gone, he walked straight away into the forest toward ths red west, its light staining his
THE COUP DE GRACE 123
face like blood. The air of confidence with which he now strode along showed that he was on familiar ground ; he had recovered his bearings. The dead on his right and on his left were unregarded as he passed. An occasional low moan from some sorely- stricken wretch whom the relief parties had not reached, and who would have to pass a comfortless night beneath the stars with his thirst to keep him company, was equally unheeded. What, indeed, could the officer have done, being no surgeon and having no water ?
At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere depres- sion of the ground, lay a small group of bodies. He saw, and, swerving suddenly from his course, walked rapidly toward them. Scanning each one sharply as he passed, he stopped at last above one which lay at a slight remove from the others, near a clump of small trees. He looked at it narrowly. It seemed to stir. He stooped and laid his hand upon its face. It screamed.
The officer was Captain Downing Madwell, of a Massachusetts regiment of infantry, a daring and in- telligent soldier, an honourable man.
In the regiment were two brothers named Hal- crow — Caffal and Creede Halcrow. Caffal Halcrow was a sergeant in Captain Madwell's company, and these two men, the sergeant and the captain, were devoted friends. In so far as disparity of rank, difference in duties, and considerations of military discipline would permit, they were commonly to-
124 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
getlier. They had, indeed, grown up together from childhood. A habit of the heart is not easily broken off. Caffal Halcrow had nothing military in his tasto or disposition, but the thought of separation from his friend was disagreeable ; he enlisted in the company in which Madwell was second lieutenant. Each had taken two steps upward in rank, but between the highest non-commissioned and the lowest commis- sioned oflScer the social gulf is deep and wide, and the old relation was maintained with difficulty and a difference.
Creede Halcrow, the brother of Caffal, was tho major of the regiment — a cynical, saturnine man, between whom and Captain Madwell there was a natural antipathy which circumstances had nourished and strengthened to an active animosity. But for the restraining influence of their mutual relation to Caffal, these two patriots would doubtless have en- deavoured to deprive their country of one another's services.
At the opening of the battle that morning, the regiment was performing outpost duty a mile away from the main army. It was attacked and nearly surrounded in the forest, but stubbornly held its ground. During a lull in the fighting. Major Hal- crow came to Captain Madwell. The two exchanged formal salutes, and the major said : ' Captain, the colonel directs that you push your company to the head of this ravine and hold your place there until recalled. I need hardly apprise you of the dangerous
- THE COUP DE GRACE 125
character of the movement, but if you wish, you can, I suppose, turn over the command to your first lieutenant. I was not, however, directed to authorise the substitution; it is merely a suggestion of my own, unofficially made.'
To this deadly insult Captain Madwell coolly re- plied : —
' Sir, I invite you to accompany the movement. A mounted officer would be a conspicuous mark, and I have long held the opinion that it would be better if you were dead.'
The art of repartee was cultivated in military circles as early as 18G2.
A half hour later Captain Madwell's company was driven from its position at the head of the ravine, with a loss of one-third its number. Among the fallen was Sergeant Hal crow. The regiment was soon afterward forced back to the main line, and at the close of the battle was miles away. The captain was now standing at the side of his subor- dinate and friend.
Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His cloth- ing was deranged ; it seemed to have been violently torn apart, exposing the abdomen. Some of the buttons of his jacket had been pulled off and lay on the ground beside him, and fragments of his other garments were strewn about. His leather belt was parted, and had apparently been dragged from be- neath him as he lay. There had been no very great effusion of blood. The only visible wound was a
126 m THE MIDST OF LIFE
wide, ragged opening in the abdomen. It was defiled with earth and dead leaves. Protruding from it was a lacerated end of the small intestine. In all his experience Captain Madwell had not seen a wound like this. He could neither conjecture how it was made nor explain the attendant circumstances — the strangely torn clothing, the parted belt, the be- smirching of the white skin. He knelt and made a closer examination. When he rose to his feet, he turned his eyes in various directions as if looking for an enemy. Fifty yards away, on the crest of a low, thinly-wooded hill, he saw several dark objects mov- ing about among the fallen men — a herd of swine. One stood with its back to him, its shoulders sharply elevated. Its forefeet were upon a human body, its head was depressed and invisible. The bristly ridge of its chine showed black against the red west. Captain Madwell drew away his eyes and fixed them again upon the thing which had been his friend.
The man who had suffered these monstrous mutilations was alive. At intervals he moved his limbs; he moaned at every breath. He stared blankly into the face of his friend, and if touched screamed. In his giant agony he had torn up the ground on which he lay ; his clenched hands were full of leaves and twigs and earth. Articulate speech was beyond his power; it was impossible to know if he were sensible to anything but pain. The ex- pression of his face was an appeal ; his eyes were full of prayer. For what ?
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There was no misreading that look ; the captain had too frequently seen it in eyes of those whose lips had still the power to formulate it by an entreaty for death. Consciously or unconsciously, this writhing fragment of humanity, this type and example of acute sensation, this handiwork of man and beast, this humble, unheroic Prometheus, was imploring everything, all, the whole non-e^o, for the boon of oblivion. To the earth and the sky alike, to the trees, to the man, to whatever took form in sense or consciousness, this incarnate suffering addressed its silent plea.
For what, indeed ? — For that which we accord to even the meanest creature without sense to demand it, denying it only to the wretched of our own race : for the blessed release, the rite of uttermost com- passion, the cowp de grace.
Captain Mad well spoke the name of his friend. He repeated it over and over without effect until emotion choked his utterance. His tears plashed upon the livid face beneath his own and blinded himself. He saw nothing but a blurred and moving object, but the moans were more distinct than ever, interrupted at briefer intervals by sharper shrieks. He turned away, struck his hand upon his forehead, and strode from the spot. The swine, catching sight of him, threw up their crimson muzzles, re- garding him suspiciously a second, and then, with a gruff, concerted grunt, raced away out of sight. A horse, its foreleg splintered horribly by a cannon
128 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
shot, lifted its head sidewise from the ground and neighed piteously. Madvvell stepped forward, drew his revolver and shot the poor beast between the eyes, narrowly observing its death struggle, which, contrary to his expectation, was violent and long ; but at last it lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which had uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, relaxed ; the sharp, clean-cut profile took on a look of profound peace and rest.
Along the distant thinly-wooded crest to west- ward the fringe of sunset fire had now nearly burned itself out. The light upon the trunks of the trees had faded to a tender grey ; the shadows were in their tops, like great dark birds aperch. The night was coming and there were miles of haunted forest between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he stood there at the side of the dead animal, apparently lost to all sense of his surroundings. His eyes were bent upon the earth at his feet ; his left hand hung loosely at his side, his right still held the pistol. Suddenly he lifted his face, turned it toward his dying friend, and walked rapidly back to his side. He knelt upon one knee, cocked the weapon, placed the muzzle against the man's forehead, turned away his eyes and pulled the trigger. There was no report. He had used his last cartridge for the horse. The sufferer moaned and his lips moved convulsively. The froth that ran from them had a tinge of blood.
Captain Madwell rose to his feet and drew his
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sword from the scabbard. He passed tlie fingers of his left hand along the edge from hilt to point. He held it out straight before him as if to test his nerves. There was no visible tremor of the blade ; the ray of bleak skylight that it reflected was steady and true. He stooped, and with his left hand tore away the dying man's shirt, rose, and placed the point of the sword just over the heart. This time he did not withdraw his eyes. Grasping the hilt with both hands, he thrust dow^nward with all his strength and weight. The blade sank into the man's body — through his body into the earth ; Captain Madwell came near falling forward upon his work. The dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm across his breast and grasj^ed the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the blade, the wound was enlarged ; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had concealed their approach. Two were hospital attendants and carried a stretcher. The third was ^lajor Creede Halcrow.
PARKER ADBERSON, PHILOSOPHER
' Prisoner, what is your name ? '
'As I am to lose it at dayliglit to-morrow morning, it is hardly worth concealing. Parker Adderson.'
' Your rank ? '
* A somewhat humble one ; commissioned officers are too precious to be risked in the perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant.'
* Of what regiment ? '
' You must excuse me ; if I answered that it might, for anything I know, give you an idea of whose forces are in your front. Such knowledge as that is what I came into your lines to obtain, not to impart.'
' You are not without wit.'
' If you have the patience to wait, you will find me dull enough to-morrow.'
' How do you know that you are to die to-morrow morning ? '
'Among spies captured by night that is the custom. It is one of the nice observances of the profession.'
s 2
132 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
The general so far laid aside the dignity appro- priate to a Confederate officer of high rank and wide renown as to smile. But no one in his power and out of his favour would have drawn any happy augury from that outward and visible sign of ap|ro/al. It was neither genial nor infectious; it did not communicate itself to the other persons exposed to it — the caught spy who had provoked it and the armed guard who had brought him into the tent and now stood a little apart, watching his prisoner in the yellow candle-light. It was no part of that warrior's duty to smile ; he had been detailed for another purpose. The conversation was resumed ; it was, in fact, a trial for a capital offence.
^ You admit, then, that you are a spy — that you came into my camp disguised as you are, in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to obtain informa- tion secretly regarding the numbers and disposition of my troops ? '
^ Regarding, particularly, their numbers. Their disposition I already knew. It is morose.'
The general brightened again ; the guard, with a severer sense of his responsibility, accentuated the austerity of his expression and stood a trifle more erect than before. Twirling his grey slouch liat round and round upon his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely survey of his surroundings. They were simple enough. The tent was a common ' wall tent,' about eight feet by ten in dimensions, lighted by a single tallow-candle stuck into the haft of a bayonet,
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 133
which was itself stuck into a pine-table, at which the general sat. now busily writing and apparently forgetful of his unwilling guest. An old rag-carpet covered the earthen floor ; an older hair-trunk, a second chair, and a roll of blankets were about all else that the tent contained ; in General Clavering's command, Confederate simplicity and penury of ' pomp and circumstance ' had attained their highest development. On a large nail driven into the tent- pole at the entrance was suspended a sword-belt supporting a long sabre, a pistol in its holster, and, absurdly enough, a bowie knife. Of that most unmilitary weapon it was the general's habit to explain that it was a cherished souvenir of the peaceful days when he was a civilian.
It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded upon the canvas in torrents, with the dull, drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. As the whooping blasts charged upon it the frail structure shook and swayed and strained at its confining stakes and ropes.
The general finished writing, folded the half sheet of paper, and spoke to the soldier guarding Adderson : ' Here, Tassman, take that to the adjutant -general ; then return.'
' And the prisoner, general ? ' said the soldier, saluting, with an inquiring glance in the direction of that unfortunate.
' Do as I said,' replied the oflScer, curtly.
The soldier took the note and ducked himself out of the tent. General Clavering turned his handsome,
134 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
clean-cut face toward the Federal spy, looked liim in the eye?, not unkindly, and said : ' It is a bad night, my man.'
* For me, yes.*
* Do you guess what I have written ? *
' Something worth reading, I dare say. And — perhaps it is my vanity — I venture to suppose that I am mentioned in it.'
* Yes ; it is a memorandum for an order to be read to the troops at reveille concerning your execu- tion. Also some notes for the guidance of the provost-marshal in arranging the details of that event.'
' I hope, general, the spectacle will be intellig- ently arranged, for I shall attend it myself.'
' Have you any arrangements of your own that you wish to make ? Do you wish to see a chaplain, for example ? '
' I could hardly secure a longer rest for myself by depriving him of some of his.'
' Good God, man ! do you mean to go to your death with nothing but jokes upon your lips ? Do you not know that this is a serious matter ? '
^ How can I know that ? I have never been dead in all my life. I have heard that death is a serious matter, but never from any of those who have ex- perienced it.'
The general was silent for a moment ; the man interested, perhaps amused, him — a type not pre- viously encountered.
* Death,' lie said, ' is at least a loss — a loss of such happiness as we have, and of opportunities for more.
' A loss of which we will never be conscious can be borne with composure and therefore expected with- out apprehension. You must have observed, general, that of all the dead men with whom it is your soldierly pleasure to strew your path, none show signs of regret.'
' If the being dead is not a regrettable condition, yet the becoming so — the act of dying — appears to be distinctly disagreeable in one who has not lost the power to feel.'
' Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never suffer it without more or less discomfort. But he who lives longest is most exposed to it. What you call dying is simply the last pain — there is really no such thing as dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the revolver that you are courteously concealing in your lap, and '
The general blushed like a girl, then laughed softly, disclosing his brilliant teeth, made a slight inclination of his handsome head, and said nothing. The spy continued : ' You fire, and I have in my stomach what I did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. After a half hour of agony I am dead. But at any given instant of that half hour I was either alive or dead. There is no transition period.'
* When I am hanged to-morrow morning it will be quite the same; while conscious I shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Nature appears to have
i:6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
ordered the matter quite in my interest — the way that I should have ordered it myself. It is so simple/ he added with a smile, ' that it seems hardly worth while to be hanged at all.'
At the finish of his remarks there was a long silence. The general sat impassive, looking into the man's face, but apparently not attentive to what had been said. It was as if his eyes had mounted guard over the prisoner, while his mind concerned itself with other matters. Presently he drew a long, deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened from a dreadful dream, and exclaimed almost inaudibly: ' Death is horrible ! ' — this man of death.
* It was horrible to our savage ancestors,' said the spy, gravely, ' because they had not enough intelli- gence to dissociate the idea of consciousness from the idea of the physical forms in which it is manifested — as an even lower order of intelligence, that of the monkey, for example, may be unable to iiiagine a house without inhabitants, and seeing a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To us it is horrible be- cause we have inherited the tendency to think it so, accounting for the notion by wild and fanciful theories of another world — as names of places give rise to legends explaining them, and reasonless con- duct to philosophies in justification. You can hang me, general, but there your power of evil ends ; you cannot condemn me to heaven.'
The general appeared not to have heard ; the Bpy's talk had merely turned his thoughts into an
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 137
unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their will independently to conclusions of their own. The storm had ceased, and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread. Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it. * I should not like to die,' he said — ' not to- night.*
He was interrupted — if, indeed, he had intended to speak further — by the entrance of an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, the provost-marshal. This recalled him to himself; the absent look passed away from his face.
' Captain,' he said, acknowledging the officer's salute, ' this man is a Yankee spy captured inside our lines with incriminating papers on him. He has confessed. How is the weather ? '
* The storm is over, sir, and the moon shining.'
* Good ; take a file of men, conduct him at once to the parade-ground, and shoot him.'
A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. He threw himself forward, thrust out his neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands.
* Good God ! ' he cried hoarsely, almost inartic- ulately ; ' you do not mean that ! You forget — I am not to die until morning.'
*I have said nothing of morning,' replied the general, coldly; 'that was an assumption of your own. You die now.'
* But, general, 1 beg — I implore you to remember;
138 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
I am to tang ! It will take some time to erect the gallows — two hours — an hour. Spies are hanged ; I have rights under military law. For Heaven's sake, general, consider how short '
* Captain, observe my directions.'
The officer drew his sword, and, fixing his eyes upon the prisoner, pointed silently to the opening of the tent. The prisoner, deathly pale, hesitated ; the officer grasped him by the collar and pushed him gently forward. As he approached the tent-pole the frantic man sprang to it, and, with cat-like agility, seized the handle of the bowie knife, plucked the weapon from the scabbard, and, thrusting the captain aside, leaped upon the general with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling headlong upon him as he lay. The table was over- turned, the candle extinguished, and they fought blindly in the darkness. The provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his superior officer, and was himself prostrated upon the struggling forms. Curses and inarticulate cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies ; the tent came down upon them, and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds the struggle went on. Private Tassman, re- turning from his errand and dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle, and, laying hold of the flouncing canvas at random, vainly tried to drag it off the men under it ; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his piece.
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 139
The report alarmed the camp ; drums beat the long roll and bugles sounded the assembly, bringing swarms of half-clad men into the moonlight, dressing as they ran, and falling into line at the sharp com- mands of their officers. This was well ; being in line the men were under control ; they stood at arms while the general's staff and the men of his escort brought order out of confusion by lifting off the fallen tent and pulling apart the breathless and bleeding actors in that strange contention.
Breathless, indeed, was one; the captain was dead, the handle of the bowie knife protruding from his throat and pressed back beneath his chin until the end had caught in the angle of the jaw, and the hand that delivered the blow had been unable to remove the weapon. In the dead man's hand was his sword, clenched with a grip that defied the strength of the living. Its blade was streaked with red to the hilt.
Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to the earth with a moan and fainted. Besides his bruises he had two sword-thrusts — one through the thigh, the other through the shoulder.
The spy had suffered the least damage. Apart from a broken right arm, his wounds were such only as might have been incurred in an ordinary combat with nature's weapons. But he was dazed, and seemed hardly to know what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon the ground, and uttered unintelligible remonstrances.
I40 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
His face, swollen by blows and stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless showed white beneath his di- shevelled hair — as white as that of a corpse.
' The man is not insane,' said the surgeon in reply to a question ; * he is suffering from fright. Who and what is he ? '
Private Tassman began to explain. It was the opportunity of his life; he omitted nothing that could in any way accentuate the importance of his own relation to the night's events. When he had finished his story and was ready to begin it again, nobody gave him any attention.
The general had now recovered consciousness. He raised himself upon his elbow, looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouching by a camp-fire, guarded, said simply : —
* Take that man to the parade-ground and shoot him.'
* The general's mind wanders,' said an officer standing near.
^ His mind does not wander,' the adjutant-general said. * I have a memorandum from him about this business; he had given that same order to Hasterlick' — with a motion of the hand toward the dead provost- marshal — ' and, by God ! it shall be executed.'
Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adderson, of the Federal army, philosopher and wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging incoherently for his life, was shot to death by twenty men. As the volley rang out upon the keen air of the winter midnight,
PARKER ADDERSON^ PHILOSOPHER 141
General Clavering, lying white and still in tlie red glow of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, looked pleasantly upon those about him, and said, ' How silent it all is ! '
The surgeon looked at the adjutant-general, gravely and significantly. The patient's eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few moments ; then, his face suffused with a smile of ineffable sweetness, he said faintly, ' I suppose this must be death,' and so passed away.
CIVILIANS
A WATCEEB BY THE DEAD
In an upper room of an unoccupied dwelling in that part of San Francisco known as North Beach lay the body of a man under a sheet. The hour was near nine in the evening; the room was dimly lighted by a single candle. Although the weather was warm, the two windows, contrary to the custom which gives the dead plenty of air, were closed and the blinds drawn down. The furniture of the room consisted of but three pieces — an arm-chair, a small reading-stand, supporting the candle, and a long kitchen-table, supporting the body of the man. All these, as also the corpse, would seem to have been recently brought in, for an observer, had there been one, would have seen that all were free from dust, whereas everything else in the room was pretty thickly coated with it, and there were cobwebs in the angles of the walls.
Under the sheet the outlines of the tody could be traced, even the features, these having that un- naturally sharp definition which seems to belong to faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those
L
146 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
only that have been wasted by disease. From the silence of the room one would rightly have inferred that it was not in the front of the house, facing a street. It really faced nothing but a high breast cf rock, the rear of the building being set into a hill.
As a neighbouring church clock was striking nine with an indolence which seemed to imply such an indifference to the flight of time that one could hardly help wondering why it took the trouble to strike at all, the single door of the room was opened and a man entered, advancing toward the body. As he did so the door closed, apparently of its own voli- tion ; there was a grating, as of a key turned with difii- culty and the snap of the lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound of retiring footsteps in the passage outside ensued, and the man was, to all appearance, a prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood a moment looking down at the body ; then, wdth a slight shrug of the shoulders, walked over to one of the windows and hoisted the blind. The darkness outside was absolute, the panes were covered with dust, but, by wiping this away, he could see that the window was fortified with strong iron bars crossing it within a few inches of the glass, and imbedded in the masonry on each side. He examined the other window. It was the same. He manifested no great curiosity in the matter, did not even so much as raise the sash. If he w^ a prisoner he was appar- ently a tractable one. Having completed his exan:i- ination of the room, be seated himself in the arm-
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD J 47
cliair, took a book from bis pocket, drew tbe stand witb its candle alongside and began to read.
Tbe man was young — not more tban tbirty — dark in complexion, smootb-sbaven, witb brown bair. His face was tbin and bigb-nosed, witb a broad forebead and a ^ firmness ' of tbe cbin and jaw wbicb is said by tbose baving it to denote resolution. Tbe eyes were grey and steadfast, not moving except witb definitive purpose. Tbey were now for tbe greater part of tbe time fixed upon bis book, but be occasionally witbdrew tbem and turned tbem to tbe body on tbe table, not, apparently, from any dismal fascination wbicb, under sucb circumstances, it migbt be supposed to exercise upon even a courageous person, nor witb a conscious rebellion against tbe opposite influence wbicb migbt dominate a timid one. He looked at it as if in bis reading be bad come upon sometbing recalling bim to a sense of bis surroundings. Clearly tbis watcber by tbe deed was discbarging bis trust witb intelligence and com- posure, as became bim.
After reading for perbaps a balf-bour be seemed to come to tbe end of a cbapter and quietly laid away tbe book. He tlien rose, and, taking tbe read- ing-stand from tbe floor, carried it into a corner of tbe room near one of tbe windows, lifted tbe candle from it, and returned to tbe empty fireplace "before wbicb be bad been sitting.
A moment later be walked over to tbe body on tbe table, lifted tbe sbeet, and turned it back from
L 2
148 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
the head, exposing a mass of dark hair and a thin face-cloth, beneath which the features showed with even sharper definition than before. Shading his eyes by interposing his free hand between them and the candle, he stood looking at his motionless com- panion with a serious and tranquil regard. Satisfied with his inspection, he pulled the sheet over the face again, and, returning to his chair, took some matches off the candlestick, put them in the side- pocket of his sack coat and sat down. He then lifted the candle from its socket and looked at it critically, as if calculating how long it would last. It was barely two inches long ; in another hour he would be in darkness ! He replaced it in the candle- stick and blew it out.
II
In a physician's oflSce in Kearny Street three men sat about a table, drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight, indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The eldest of the three, Dr. Helberson, was the host ; it was in his rooms they sat. He was about thirty years of age ; the others were even younger ; all were physicians.
*The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead,' said Dr. Helberson, ' is hereditary and incurable. One need no more be ashamed of it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for mathematics, or a tendency to lie.*
The others laughed. ' Oughtn't a man to be
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 149
ashamed to be a liar ? ' asked the youngest of the three, who was, in fact, a medical student not yet graduated.
* My dear Harper, I said nothing about that. The tendency to lie is one thing ; lying is another.'
* But do you think,' said the third man, ' that this superstitious feeling, this fear of the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is universal ? I am myself not conscious of it.'
' Oh, but it is ^' in your system " for all that,' replied llelberson : ' it needs only the right condi- tions— what Shakespeare calls the " confederate season " — to manifest itself in some very disagreeable way that will open your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are, of course, more nearly free from it than others.'
' Physicians and soldiers ; — why don't you add hangmen and headsmen? Let us have in all the assassin classes.'
' No, my dear Mancher ; the juries will not let the public executioners acquire sufficient familiarity with death to be altogether unmoved by it.'
Young Harper, who had been helping himself to a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed his seat. ' What would you consider conditions under which any man of woman born would become insupportably conscious of his share of our common weakness in this regard ? ' he asked, rather verbosely.
' Well, I should say that if a man were lock3d up all night with a corpse — alone — in a dark room — of a vacant house — with no bed-covers to pull over his
150 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
liead^-and lived through it without going altogether mad — he might justly boast himself not of woman born, nor yet, like Macduff, a product of Cassarean section.'
'I thought you never would finish piling up conditions,' said Harper ; ' but I know a man who is neither a physician nor a soldier who will accept them all, for any stake you like to name.'
^ Who is he?'
' His name is Jarette — a stranger in California ; comes from my town in New York. I haven't any money to back him, but he will back himself with dead loads of it.'
' How do you know that ? '
^ He would rather bet than eat. As for fear — I dare say he thinks it some cutaneous disorder, or, possibly, a particular kind of religious heresy.'
' What does he look like ? ' Helberson was evid- ently becoming interested.
^ Like Mancher, here — might be his twin brother.*
' I accept the challenge,' said Helberson, promptly.
* Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure,' drawled Mancher, who was growing sleepy. * Can't I get into this ? '
^ Not against me,' Helberson said. * I don't want your money.'
^ All right,' said Mancher ; * I'll be the corpse.'
The others laughed.
The outcome of this crazy conversation we have seen.
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 151
III
In extinguishing his meagre allowance of candle Mr. Jarette's object was to preserve it against some unforeseen need. He may have thought, too, or half thought, that the darkness would be no worse at one time than another, and if the situation became insup- portable, it would be better to have a means of relief, or even release. At any rate, it was wise to have a little reserve of light, even if only to enable him to look at his watch.
No sooner had he blown out the candle and set it on the floor at his side than he settled himself com- fortably in the arm-chair, leaned back and closed his eyes, hoping and expecting to sleep. In this he was disappointed ; he had never in his life felt less sleepy, and in a few minutes he gave up the attempt. But what could he do ? He could not go groping about in the absolute darkness at the risk of bruising him- self— at the risk, too, of blundering against the table and rudely disturbing the dead. We all recognise their right to lie at rest, with immunity from all that is harsh and violent. Jarette almost succeeded in making himself believe that considerations of that kind restrained him from risking the collision and fixed him to the chair.
While thinking of this matter he fancied that he heard a faint sound in the direction of the table — what kind of sound he could hardly have explained. He did not turn his head. Why should he — in the
152 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
darkness ? But he listened — why should he not ? And listening he grew giddy and grasped the arms of the chair for support. There was a strange ring- ing in his ears ; his head seemed bursting ; his chest was oppressed by the constriction of his clothing. He wondered why it was so, and whether these were symptoms of fear. Suddenly, with a long and strong expiration, his chest appeared to collapse, and with the great gasp with which he refilled his exhausted lungs the vertigo left him, and he knew that so intently had he listened that he had held his breath almost to suffocation. The revelation was vexatious ; he arose, pushed away the chair with his foot, and strode to the centre of the room. But one does not stride far in darkness ; he began to grope, and, find- ing the wall, followed it to an angle, turned, fol- lowed it past the two w^indows, and there in another corner came into violent contact with the reading- stand, overturning it. It made a clatter which startled him. He was annoyed. ' How the devil could I have forgotten where it was ! ' he muttered, and groped his way along the third wall to the fire- place. 'I must put things to rights,' said Mr. Jarette, feeling the floor for the candle.
Having recovered that, he lighted it and in- stantly turned his eyes to the table, where, naturally, nothing had undergone any change. The reading- stand lay unobserved upon the floor; he had for- gotten to * put it to rights.' He looked all about the room, dispersing the deeper shadows by move-
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 153
ments of the candle in his hand, and, finally, crossing over to the door, tried it by turning and pulling the knob with all his strength. It did not yield, and this seemed to afford him a certain satisfaction ; indeed, he secured it more firmly by a bolt which he had not before observed. Returning to his chair, he looked at his watch ; it was half-past nine. With a start of surprise he held the watch at his ear. It had not stc)pped. The candle was now visibly shorter. He again extinguished it, placing it on the floor at his side as before.
Mr. Jarette was not at his ease ; he was distinctly dissatisfied with his surroundings, and with himself for being so. ^ What have I to fear ? ' he thought. ' This is ridiculous and disgraceful ; I will not be so great a fool.' But courage does not come of saying, ' I will be courageous,' nor of recognising its appro- priateness to the occasion. The more Jarette con- demned himself, the more reason he gave himself for condemnation ; the greater the number of variations which he played upon the simple theme of the harm- lessness of the dead, the more horrible grew the discord of his emotions. ' What ! ' he cried aloud in the anguish of his spirit, ' what ! shall I, who have not a shade of superstition in my nature — I, who have no belief in immortality — I, w^ho know (and never more clearly than now) that the after-life is the dream of a desire — shall I lose at once my bet, my honour, and my self-respect, perhaps my reason, be- cause certain savage ancestors, dwelling in caves and
154 " /A' THE MIDST OF LIFE
burrows, conceived tlie monstrous notion that the dead walk by night ; that ' distinctly, unmistak- ably, Mr. Jarette heard behind him a light, soft sound of footfalls, deliberate, regular, and successively nearer!
IV
Just before daybreak the next morning Dr. Hel- berson and his young friend Harper were driving slowly through the streets of North Beach in the doctor's coupe.
' Have you still the confidence of youth in the courage or stolidity of your friend ? ' said the elder man. ' Do you believ^e that I have lost this wager?'
' I hiow you have,' replied the other, with en- feebling emphasis.
' Well, upon my soul, I hope so.'
It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly. There was a silence for a few moments.
' Harper,' the doctor resumed, looking very serious in the shifting half-lights that entered the can-rage as they passed the street-lamps, ' I don't feel altogether comfortable about this business. If your friend had not irritated me by the contemptuous manner in which he treated my doubt of his endur- ance— a purely physical quality — and by the cool incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be that of a physician, I should not have gone on with it. If anything should happen, we are ruined, as I fear we deserve to be.'
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 155
' What can happen ? Even if the matter should be taking a serious turn — of which I am not at all afraid — Mancher has only to resurrect himself and explain matters. With a genuine *' subject " from the dissecting-room, or one of your late patients, it might be different.'
Dr. Mancher, then, had been as good as his promise ; he was the ' corpse.'
Dr. Helberson was silent for a long time, as the carriage, at a snail's pace, crept along the same street it had travelled two or three times already. Presently he spoke : ' Well, let us hope that Mancher, if he has had to rise from the dead, has been discreet about it. A mistake in that might make matters worse instead of better.'
* Yes,' said Harper, ^ Jarette would kill him. But, doctor ' — looking at his watch as the carriage passed a gas-lamp — ' it is nearly four o'clock at last.'
A moment later the two had quitted the vehicle, and were walking briskly toward the long unoccu- pied house belonging to the doctor, in which they had immured Mr. Jarette, in accordance with the terms of the mad wager. As they neared it, they met a man running. ' Can you tell me,' he cried, suddenly checking his speed, ^ where I can find a physician ? '
* What's the matter ? ' Helberson asked, non-com- mittal.
* Go and see for yourself,' said the man, resuming his running.
IS6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
They hastened on. Arrived at the house, they saw several persons entering in haste and excitement. In some of the dwellings near by and across the way, the chamber windows were thrown up, showing a pro- trusion of heads. All heads were asking questions, none heeding the questions of the others. A few of the windows with closed blinds were illuminated ; the inmates of those rooms were dressing to come down. Exactly opposite the door of the house which they sought, a street-lamp threw a yellow, insufficient light upon the scene, seeming to say that it could disclose a good deal more if it wished. Harper, who was now deathly pale, paused at the door and laid a hand upon his companion's arm. ^ It's all up with us, doctor,' he said in extreme agitation, which con- trasted strangely with his free and easy words ; ' the game has gone against us all. Let's not go in there; I'm for lying low.'
'I'm a j)hysician,' said Dr. Helberson, calmly; ' there may be need of one.'
They mounted the doorsteps and were about to enter. The door was open ; the street lamp opposite lighted the passage into which it opened. It was full of people. Some had ascended the stairs at the farther end, and, denied admittance above, waited for better fortune. All were talking, none listening. Suddenly, on the upper landing there was a great commotion; a man had sprung out of a door and was breaking away from those endeavouring to detain him. Down through the mass of affrighted idlers
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 157
he came, pushing them aside, flattening them against the wall on one side, or compelling them to cling by the rail on the other, clutching them by the throat, striking them savagely, thrusting them back down the stairs, and walking over the fallen. His clothing was in disorder, ho was without a hat. His eyes, wild and restless, had in them something more terrify- ing than his apparently superhuman strength. His face, smooth-shaven, w^as bloodless, his hair snow white.
As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, having more freedom, fell away to let him pass. Harper sprang forward. * Jarette ! Jarette ! ' he cried.
Dr. Helberson seized Harper by the collar and dragged him back. The man looked into their faces without seeming to see them, and sprang through the door, down the steps, into the street and away. A stout policeman, who had had inferior success in conquering his way down the stairway, followed a moment later and started in pursuit, all the heads in the windows — those of women and children now — screaming in guidance.
The stairway being now partly cleared, most of the crowd having rushed down to the street to observe the flight and pursuit. Dr. Helberson mounted to the landing, followed by Harper. At a door in the upper passage an officer denied them admittance. *We are physicians,' said the doctor, and they passed in. The room was full of men, dimly seen, crowded about a table. The newcomers edged their way forward,
IS8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
and looked over the shoulders of those in the front- rank. Upon the table, the lower Hmbs covered with a sheet, lay the body of a man, brilliantly illuminated by the beam of a bull's-eye lantern held by a police- man standing at the feet. The others, excepting those near the head — the officer himself — all were in darkness. The face of the body showed yellow, re- pulsive, horrible ! The eyes were partly open and upturned, and the jaw fallen ; traces of froth defiled the lips, the chin, the cheeks. A tall man, evidently a physician, bent over the body with his hand thrust under the shirt front. He withdrew it and placed two fingers in the open mouth. ' This man has been about two hours dead,' said he. ' It is a case for the coroner.'
He drew a card from his pocket, handed it to the officer, and made his way toward the door.
' Clear the room — out, all ! ' said the officer, sharply, and the body disappeared as if it had been snatched away, as he shifted the lantern and flashed its beam of light here and there against the faces of the crowd. The effect was amazing! The men, blinded, confused, almost terrified, made a tumultuous rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and tumbling over one another as they fled, like the hosts of Night before the shafts of Apollo. Upon the struggling, trampling mass the officer poured his light without pity and without cessation. Caught in the current, Helberson and Harper were swept out of the room and cascaded down the stairs into the street.
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 159
' Good God, doctor ! did I not tell you that Jarette would kill him ? ' said Harper, as soon as they were clear of the crowd.
^ I believe you did,' replied the other without apparent emotion.
They walked on in silence, block after block. Against the greying east the dwellings of our hill tribes showed in silhouette. The familiar milk- waggon was already astir in the streets ; the baker's man would soon come upon the scene ; the newspaper carrier was abroad in the land.
' It strikes me, youngster,' said Helberson, ' that you and I have been having too much of the morning air lately. It is unwholesome ; we need a change. What do you say to a tour in Europe ? '
' When ? '
' I'm not particular. I should suppose that 4 o'clock this afternoon would be early enough.'
* I'll meet you at the boat,' said Harper.
V
Seven years afterward these two men sat upon a bench in Madison Square, New York, in familiar conversation. Another man, who had been observing them for some time, himself unobserved, approached and, courteously lifting his hat from locks as white as snow, said : ' I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but when you have killed a man by coming to life, it ia best to change clothes with him, and at the first opportunity make a break for liberty.'
i6o IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Helberson and Harper exclianged significant glances. They were apparently amused. The former then looked the stranger kindly in the eye, and replied :
' That has always been my plan. I entirely agree with you as to its advant '
He stopped suddenly and grew deathly pale. He stared at the man, open-mouthed ; he trembled visibly.
' Ah ! ' said the stranger, ' I see that you are in- disposed, doctor. If you cannot treat yourself. Dr. Harper can do something for you, I am sure.'
' Who the devil are you ? ' said Harper bluntly.
The stranger came nearer, and, bending toward them, said in a whisper : ' I call myself Jarette some- times, but I don't mind telling you, for old friend- ship, that I am Dr. William Mancher.'
The revelation brought both men to their feet.
* Mancher ! ' they cried in a breath ; and Helberson added : ' It is true, by God ! '
' Yes,' said the stranger, smiling vaguely, * it is true enough, no doubt.'
He hesitated, and seemed to be trying to recall something, then began humming a popular air. He had apparently forgotten their presence.
' Look here, Mancher,' said the elder of the two,
* tell us just what occurred that night — to Jarette, you know.'
* Oh, yes, about Jarette,' said the other. * It's odd I should have neglected to tell you — I tell it so often.
A IVATCIIER r.V THE DEAD i6i
You see I knew, by overhearing him talking to him- self, that he was pretty badly frightened. So I couldn't resist the temptation to come to life and have a bit of fun out of him — I couldn't, really. That was all right, though certainly 1 did not think he would take it so seriously ; I did not, truly. And afterward — well, it was a tough job changing places with him, and then — damn you ! you didn't let me out ! '
Nothing could exceed the ferocity with which these last words were delivered. Both men stepped back in alarm.
'We? — why — why — ,' Helberson stammered, losing his self-possession utterly, ' we had nothing to do with it.'
' Didn't I say you were Doctors Hellborn and Sharper ? ' inquired the lunatic, laughing.
' My name is Helberson, yes ; and this gentleman is Mr. Harper,' replied the former, reassured. ' But we are not physicians now ; we are — well, hang it, old man, we are gamblers.'
And that was the truth.
'A very good profession — very good, indeed; and, by the way, I hope Sharper here paid over Jarette's money like an honest stakeholder. A very good and honourable profession,' he repeated, thought- fully, moving carelessly away ; ' but I stick to the old one. I am High Supreme Medical OfiScer of the Bloomingdale Asylum ; it is my duty to cure the superintendent.'
M
TEE MAN AND THE SNAKE
It is of veritabyll report, aud attested of so many that there be nowe of wyse and learned none to gaynsaye it, that ye serpente hys eye hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its svasion is drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, and perisheth miserabyll by ye creature hys byte.
Stretched at ease upon a sofa, in gown Jind slippers, Harker Brayton smiled as lie read tlie foregoing sentence in old Morryster's ^ ^farvells of Science/ * The only marvel in tlie matter,' lie said to himself, ' is that the wise and learned in Morryster's day should have believed such nonsense as is rejected by most of even the ignorant in ours.'
A train of reflections followed — for Brayton was a man of thought — and he unconsciously lowered his book without altering the direction of his eyes. As soon as the volume had gone below the line of sight, something in an obscure corner of the room recalled his attention to his surroundings. What he saw, in the shadow under his bed, were two small points of light, apparently about an inch apart. They might have been reflections of the gas jet above him, in metal nail heads ; he gave them but little thought and resumed his reading. A moment later some-
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tiling — some impulse wliich it did not occur to him to analyse — impelled him to lower the book again and seek for what he saw before. The points of light were still there. They seemed to have become brighter than before, shining with a greenish lustre which he had not at first observed. He thought, too, that they might have moved a trifle — were some- what nearer. They were still too much in shadow, however, to reveal their nature and origin to an in- dolent attention, and he resumed his reading. Suddenly something in the text suggested a thought which made him start and drop the book for the third time to the side of the sofa, whence, escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling to the floor, back upward. Brayton, half risen, was staring intently into the obscurity beneath the bed, where the points of light shone wdth, it seemed to him, an added fire. His attention w^as now fully aroused, his gaze eager and imperative. It disclosed, almost directly beneath the foot-rail of the bed, the coils of a large serpent — the points of light were its eyes ! ^ Its horrible head, thrust flatly forth from the innermost coil and resting upon the outermost, was directed straight toward him, the definition of the wide, brutal jaw and the idiot-like forehead serving to show the direction of its malevolent gaze. The eyes were no longer merely luminous points ; they looked into his own with a meaning, a malign signifi- cance.
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 165
II
A snake in a bedroom of a modern city dwell- ing of the better sort is, bappily, not so common a phenomenon as to make explanation altogether needless. Harker Brayton, a bachelor of thirty-five, a scholar, idler, and something of an athlete, rich, popular, and of sound health, had returned to San Francisco from all manner of remote and unfamiliar countries. His tastes, always a trifle luxurious, had taken on an added exuberance from long privation ; and the resources of even the Castle Hotel being inadequate to their perfect gratification, he had gladly accepted the hospitality of his friend. Dr. Druring, the distinguished scientist. Dr. Druring's house, a large, old-fashioned one in. what was now an obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and visible aspect of proud reserve. It plainly would not associate with the contiguous elements of its altered environment, and appeared to have developed some of the eccentricities which come of isolation. One of these was a ' wing,' conspicu- ously irrelevant in point of architecture, and no less rebellious in the matter of purpose ; for it was a combination of laboratory, menagerie, and museum. It was here that the doctor indulged the scientific side of his nature in the study of such forms of animal life as engaged his interest and comforted his taste — which, it must be confessed, ran rather to the lower forms. For one of the higher types nimbly
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and sweetly to recommend itself unto his gentle senses, it had at least to retain certain rudimentary characteristics allying it to such ^ dragons of the prime ' as toads and snakes. His scientific sympathies were distinctly reptilian ; he loved nature's vul- garians and described himself as the Zola of zoology. His wife and daughters, not having the advantage to share his enlightened curiosity regarding the works and ways of our ill-starred fellow-creatures, were, with needless austerity, excluded from what he called the Snakery, and doomed to companionship with their own kind, though, to soften the rigours of their lot, he had permitted them, out of his great wealth, to outdo the reptiles in the gorgeousness of their surroundings and to shine with a superior splendour.
Architecturally, and in point of ' furnishing,' the Snakery had a severe simplicity befitting the humble circumstances of its occupants, many of whom, indeed, could not safely have been intrusted with the liberty which is necessary to the full enjoyment of luxury, for they had the troublesome peculiarity of being alive. In their own apartments, however, they were under as little personal restraint as was compatible with their protection from the baneful habit of swallowing one another; and, as Brayton had thoughtfully been apprised, it was more than a tradition that some of them had at divers times been found in parts of the premises where it would have embarrassed them to explain their presence. Despite
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the Snakery and its uncanny associations — to which, indeed, he gave little attention — Brayton found life at the Druring mansion very much to his mind.
Ill
Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a shudder of mere loathing, Mr. Brayton was not greatly affected. His first thought was to ring the call-bell and bring a servant; but, although the bell-cord dangled within easy reach, he made no movement toward it ; it had occurred to his mind that the act might subject him to the suspicion of fear, which he certainly did not feel. He was more keenly conscious of the incongruous nature of the situation than affected by its perils ; it was revolting, but absurd.
The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar. Its length he could only conjecture ; the body at the largest visible part seemed about as thick as his forearm. In what way was it dangerous, if in any way ? Was it venomous ? Was it a constrictor ? His knowledge of nature's danger signals did not enable him to say ; he had never deciphered the code.
If not dangerous, the creature was at least offen- sive. It was de iro]i — ' matter out of place ' — an impertinence. The gem was unworthy of the setting. Even the barbarous taste of our time and country, which had loaded the walls of the room with pictures
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the floor with furniture and the furniture with brio- a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this bit of the savage life of the jungle. Besides — insup- portable thought ! — the exhalations of its breath mingled with the atmosphere which he himself was breathing !
These thoughts shaped themselves with greater or less definition in Brayton's mind, and begot action. The process is what we call consideration and decision. It is thus that we are wise and unwise. It is thus that the withered leaf in an autumn breeze shows greater or less intelligence than its fellows, falling upon the land or upon the lake. The secret of human action is an open one : something contracts our muscles. Does it matter if we give to the preparatory molecular changes the name of will ?
Bray ton rose to his feet and prepared to back softly away from the snake, without disturbing it, if possible, and through the door. People retire so from the presence of the great, for greatness is power, and power is a menace. He knew that he could walk backward without obstruction, and find the door without error. Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the meantime the snake's eyes burned with a more pitiless malevolence than ever.
Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor to
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 169
step backward. Tliat moment he felt a strong aversion to doing so.
^ I am accounted brave,' he murmured ; ' is bravery, then, no more than pride ? Because there are none to witness the shame shall I retreat ? '
He was steadying himself with his right hand upon the back of a chair, his foot suspended.
' Nonsense ! ' he said aloud ; ' I am not so great a coward as to fear to seem to myself afraid.'
He ^lifted the foot a little higher by slightly bending the knee, and thrust it sharply to the floor — an inch in front of the other ! He could not think how that occurred. A trial with the left foot had the same result ; it was again in advance of the right. The hand upon the chair-back was grasping it; the arm was straight, reaching somewhat back- ward. One might have seen that he was reluctant to lose his hold. The snake's malignant head was still thrust forth from the inner coil as before, the neck level. It had not moved, but its eyes were now electric sparks, radiating an infinity of luminous needles.
The man had an ashy pallor. Again he took a step forward, and another, partly dragging the chair, which, when finally released, fell upon the floor with a crash. The man groaned; the snake made neither sound nor motion, but its eyes were two dazzling suns. The reptile itself was wholly con- cealed by them. They gave oflf enlarging rings of rich and vivid colours, which at their greatest
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expansion successively vanished like soap bubbles; they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were an immeasurable distance away. He heard, some- where, the continuous throbbing of a great drum, with desultory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew it for the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds, hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal anthem through the silence of the centuries.
The music ceased ; rather, it became by insensible degrees the distant roll of a retreating thunderstorm. A landscape, glittering with sun and rain, stretched before him, arched with a vivid rainbow, framing in its giant curve a hundred visible cities. In the middle distance a vast serpent, wearing a crown, reared its head out of its voluminous convolutions and looked at him with his dead mother's eyes. Suddenly this enchanting landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward, like the drop-scene at a theatre, and vanished in a blank. Something struck him a hard blow upon the face and breast. He had fallen to the floor; the blood ran from his broken nose and his bruised lips. For a moment he was dazed and stunned, and lay with closed eyes, his face against the floor. In a few moments he had recovered, and then realised that his fall, by withdrawing his eyes, had broken the spell which held him. He felt that now, by keeping his gaze averted, he would be able to retreat. But the thought of the serpent within a
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few feet of his head, yet unseen — perhaps in the very act of springing upon him and throwing its coils about his throat — was too horrible. He lifted his head, stared again into those baleful eyes, and was again in bondage.
The snake had not moved, and appeared some- what to have lost its power upon the imagination ; the gorgeous illusions of a few moments before were not repeated. Beneath that flat and brainless brow its black, beady eyes simply glittered, as at first, with an expression unspeakably malignant. It was as if the creature, knowing its triumph assured, had determined to practise no more alluring wiles.
Now ensued a fearful scene. The man, prone upon the floor, within a yard of his enemy, raised the upper part of his body upon his elbows, his head thrown back, his legs extended to their full length. His face was white between its gouts of blood ; his eyes were strained open to their uttermost expansion. There was froth upon his lips; it dropped off in flakes. Strong convulsions ran through his body, making almost serpentine undulations. He bent himself at the waist, shifting his legs from side to side. And every movement left him a little nearer to the snake. He thrust his hands forward to brace himself back, yet constantly advanced upon his elbows.
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IV
Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. The scientist was in rare good humour.
' I have just obtained, by exchange with another collector/ he said, ' a splendid specimen of the ophio^phagusJ
* And what may that be ? ' the lady inquired with a somewhat languid interest.
* Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance ! My dear, a man who ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know Greek, is entitled to a divorce. The opMophagus is a snake which eats other snakes.'
' I hope it will eat all yours,' she said, absently shifting the lamp. ' But how does it get the other snakes ? By charming them, I suppose.'
' That is just like you, dear,' said the doctor, with an affection of petulance. 'You know how irritating to me is any allusion to that vulgar super- stition about the snake's power of fascination.'
The conversation was interrupted by a mighty cry, which rang through the silent house like the voice of a demon shouting in a tomb ! Again and yet again it sounded, with terrible distinctness. They sprang to their feet, the man confused, the lady pale and speechless with fright. Almost before the echoes of the last cry had died away, the doctor was out of the room, springing up the staircase two steps at a time. In the corridor, in front of Bray- ton's chamber, he met some servants who had come
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 173
from the upper floor. Together they rushed at the door without knocking. It was unfastened and gave way. Brayton lay upon his stomach on the floor, dead. His head and arms were partly concealed under the foot-rail of tLe bed. They pulled the body away, turning it upon the back. The face was daubed with blood and froth, the eyes were wide open, staring — a dreadful sight !
*Died in a fit,' said the scientist, bending his knee and placing his hand upon the heart. While in that position, he happened to glance under the bed. * Good God ! ' he added, ^ how did this thing get in here ? '
He reached under the bed, pulled out the snake, and flung it, still coiled, to the centre of the room, whence, with a harsh, shuffling sound, it slid across the polished floor till stopped by the wall, where it lay without motion. It was a stufied snake ; its eyes were two shoe buttons.
A HOLY TERROPv
There was an entire lack of interest in tlie latest arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened with the picturesquely descriptive nickname which is so frequently a mining camp's word of welcome to the new-comer. In almost any other camp thereabout this circumstance would of itself have secured him some such appellation as ' The White-headed Conun- drum,' or ^ No Sarvey ' — an expression naively supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the Spanish quien sale. He came without provoking a ripple of concern upon the social surface of Hurdy- Gurdy — a place which, to the general Californian contempt of men's personal antecedents superadded a local indifference of its own. The time was long past when it was of any importance who came there, or if anybody came. No one was living at Hurdy- Gurdy.
Two years before, the camp had boasted a stirring population of two or three thousand males, and not fewer than a dozen females. A majority of the former had done a few weeks' earnest work in de- monstrating, to the disgust of the latter, the singu-
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larly mendacious character of tlie person whose ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them thither — work, by the way, in which there was as little mental satisfaction as pecuniary profit ; for a bullet from the pistol of a public- spirited citizen had put that imaginative gentleman beyond the reach of aspersion on the third day of the camp's existence. Still, his fiction had a certain foundation in fact, and many had lingered a considerable time in and about Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long gone.
But they had left ample evidence of their sojourn. From the point where Injun Creek falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, up along both banks of the former into the canon whence it emerges, extended a double row of forlorn shanties that seemed about to fall upon one another's neck to bewail their desolation ; while about an equal number appeared to have straggled up the slope on either hand, and perched themselves upon commanding eminences, whence they craned forward to get a good view of the affecting scene. Most of these habitations were emaciated, as by famine, to the condition of mere skeletons, about which clung unlovely tatters of what might have been skin, but was really canvas. The little valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and shovel, was unhandsome, with long, bending lines of decaying flume resting here and there upon the summits of sharp ridges, and stilting awkwardly across the interspaces upon unhewn poles. The whole place presented that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested
A HOLY TERROR 177
development which is a new country's substitute for the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. When- ever there remained a patch of the original soil, a rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles had spread upon the scene, and from its dank, unwholesome shades the visitor curious in such matters might have obtained numberless souvenirs of the camp's former gloiy — fellowless boots mantled with green mould and plethoric of rotting leaves; an occasional old felt hat ; desultory remnants of a flannel shirt ; sardine boxes inhumanly mutilated, and a surprising pro- fusion of black bottles, distributed with a truly catholic impartiality everywhere.
II
The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy- Gurdy was evidently not curious as to its archaeology. Nor, as he looked about him upon the dismal evi- dences of wasted work and broken hopes, their dispiriting significance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a cheap gilding by the rising sun, did he supplement his sigh of weariness by one of sensibility. He simply removed from the back of his tired burro a miner's outfit a trifle larger than the animal itself, picketed that creature, and, selecting a hatchet from his kit, moved off at once across the dry bed of Injun Creek to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond.
Stepping ^across a prostrate fence of brush and boards, he picked up one of the latter, split it into
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five parts, and sharpened tliem at one end. He then began a kind of search, occasionally stooping to examine something with close attention. At last his patient scrutiny appeared to be rewarded with success, for he suddenly erected his figure to its full height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pronounced the word ' Scarry,' and at once strode away, with long, equal steps, which he Counted, then stopped and drove one of his stakes into the earth. He then looked carefully about him, measured off a number of paces over a singularly uneven ground, and hammered in another. Pacing off twice the distance at a right angle to his former course, he drove down a third, and, repeating the process, sank home the fourth, and then a fifth. This he split at the top, and in the cleft inserted an old letter envelope, covered with an intricate system of pencil tracks. In short, he staked off a hill-claim in strict accordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy-Gurdy, and put up the customary notice.
It is necessary to explain that one of the adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy — one to which that metropolis became afterward itself an adjunct — was a cemetery. In the first week of the camp's existence this had been thoughtfully laid out by a committee of citizens. The day after had been signalised by a debate between two members of the committee, with re- ference to a more eligible site, and on the third day the necropolis "v^as inaugurated by a double funeral. As the camp had waned the cemetery- had waxed ;
A HOLY TERROR 179
and long before the ultimate inhabitant, victorious alike over the insidious malaria and the forthright revolver, had turned the tail of his pack-ass upon Injun Creek, the outlying settlement had become a populous if not popular suburb. And now, when the town was fallen into the sere and yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the graveyard — though some- what marred by tim^ and circumstance, and not altogether exempt from innovations in grammar and experiments in orthography, to say nothing of the devastating coyote — answered the humble needs of its denizens with reasonable completeness. It comprised a generous two acres of ground, which, with com- mendable thrift but needless care, had been selected for its mineral unworth, contained two or three skeleton trees (one of which had a stout lateral branch from which a weather-wasted rope still significantly dangled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a score of rude headboards displaying the literary peculiarities above mentioned, and a struggling colony of prickly pears. Altogether, God's Location, as with character- istic reverence it had been called, could justly boast of an indubitably superior quality of desolation. It was in the most thickly settled portion of this inter- esting demesne that Mr. Jefferson Doraan staked off his claim. If in the prosecution of his design he should deem it expedient to remove any of the dead, they would have the right to be suitably re-interred.
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III
This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Elizabeth- town, New Jersey, where, six years before, he had left his heart in the keeping of a golden-haired, demure-mannered young woman named Mary Mat- thews, as collateral security for his return to claim her hand.
'I just liuow you'll never get back alive — you never do succeed in anything,' was the remark which illustrated Miss Matthews' notion of what constituted success, and, incidentally, her view of the nature of encouragement. She added : * If you don't I'll go to California too. I can put the coins in little bags as you dig them out.'
This characteristically feminine theory of aurifer- ous deposits did not commend itself to the masculine intelligence : it was Mr. Doman's belief that gold was found in a liquid condition. He deprecated her intent with considerable enthusiasm, suppressed her sobs with a light hand upon her mouth, laughed in her eyes as he kissed away her tears, and, with a cheerful ' Ta-ta,' went to California to labour for her through the long, loveless years, with a strong heai't, an alert hope, and a steadfast fidelity that never for a moment forgot what it was about. In the mean- time Miss Matthews had granted a monopoly of her humble talent for sacking up coins to Mr. Jo Seeman, of New York, gambler, by whom it was better ap- preciated than her commanding genius for unsacking
A HOLY TERROR iSi
and bestowing them upon Lis local rivals. Of this latter aptitude, indeed, he manifested his disapproval by an act which secured him the position of clerk of the prison laundry at Sing Sing, and for her the sobriquet of ^ Split-faced Moll.' At about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a touching letter of renuncia- tion, inclosing her photograph to prove that she had no longer a right to indulge the dream of becoming Mrs. Doman, and recounting so graphically her fall from a horse that the staid bronco upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into Red Dog to get the letter, made vicarious atonement under the spur all the way back to camp. The letter failed in a signal way to accom- plish its object ; the fidelity which had before been to Mr. Doman a matter of love and duty, was thenceforth a matter of honour also ; and the photograph, showing the once pretty face sadly disfigured as by the slash of a knife, was duly instated in his affections, and its more comely predecessor treated with contumelious neglect. On being apprised of this. Miss Matthews, it is only fair to say, appeared less surprised than from the apparently low estimate of Mr. Doman's generosity which the tone of her former letter attested, one would naturally have expected her to be. Soon after, however, her letters grew infrequent, and then ceased altogether.
But Mr. Doman had another correspondent, Mr. Barney Bree, of Hurdy-Gurdy, formerly of Red Dog. This gentleman, although a notable figure among miners, was not a miner. His knowledge of mining
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consisted mainly in a marvellous command of its slang, to whicli lie made copious contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of extra- ordinary phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and which impressed the unlearned * tender-foot ' with a lively sense of the profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of sweeping out the various dance-houses and purifying the spittoons.
Barney had apparently but two passions in life — love of Jefferson Doman, who had once been of some service to him, and love of whisky, which certainly had not. He had been among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, but had not prospered, and had sunk by degrees to the position of gravedigger. This was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some local misunderstanding at the card-table and his own partial recovery from a prolonged debauch occurred coincidently in point of time. One day Mr. Doman received, at Red Dog, a letter with the simple postmark, ^ Hurdy, Cal.,' and being occupied with another matter, carelessly thrust it into a chink of his cabin for future perusal. Some two years later it was accidentally dislodged, and he read it. It ran as follows : —
A HOLY TERROR 1 83
' IIURDY, June C. ' Friend Jeff : I've hit her hard in the bone- yard. She's blind and lousy. I'm on the divvy — that's me, and mum's my lay till you toot.
' Yours, BARNEy.
* P.S. — I've clayed her with Scarry.*
"With some knowledge of the general mining camp arcjoi and of Mr. Bree's private system for the communication of ideas, Mr. Doman had no diffi- culty in understanding by this uncommon epistle that Barney, while performing his duty as grave- digger, had uncovered a quartz ledge with no out- croppings ; that it was visibly rich in free gold ; that moved by considerations of friendship, he was willing to accept Mr. Doman as a partner, and, pending that gentleman's declaration of his will in the matter, would discreetly keej) the discovery a secret. From the postscript it was plainly inferable that, in order to conceal the treasure, he had buried above it the mortal part of a person named Scarry.
From subsequent events, as related to Mr. Doman at Ked Dog, it would appear -that before taking this precaution Mr. Bree ,had the thrift to remove a modest competency of the gold ; at any rate, it was about that time that he entered upon that memor- able series of potations- and treatings which is still one of the cherished traditions of the San Juan Smith country, and is spoken of with respect as far away as Ghost Rock and Lone Hand. At its con-
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elusion, some former citizens of Hurdy-Gurdy, for whom he had performed the last kindly office at the cemetery, made room for him among them, and he rested well.
IV
Having finished staking off his claim, Mr. Doman walked back to the centre of it and stood again at the spot where his search among the graves had expired in the exclamation, ' Scarry.' He bent again over the headboard which bore that name, and, as if to reinforce the senses of sight and hearing, ran his forefinger along the rudely-carved letters, and re-erecting himself, appended orally to the simple inscription the shockingly forthright epitaph, ^ She was a holy terror ! '
Had Mr. Doman been required to make these words good with proof — as, considering their some- what censorious character, he doubtless should have been — he would have found himself embarrassed by the absence of reputable witnesses, and hearsay evidence would have been the best he could command. At the time when Scarry had been prevalent in the mining camps thereabout — when, as the editor of the Hurdy Herald would have phrased it, she was *in the plentitude of her power' — Mr. Doman's fortunes had been at a low ebb and he had led the vagrantly laborious life of a prospector. His time had been mostly spent in the mountains; now with one companion, now with another. It was from
A HOLY TERROR 185
the admiring recitals of these casual partners, fresh from the various camps, that his judgment of Scarry had been made up; himself had never had the doubtful advantage of her acquaintance and the precarious distinction of her favour. And when, finally, on the termination of her perverse career at Hurdy-Gurdy, he had read in a chance copy of the Jlerald her column-long obituary (written by the local humourist of that lively sheet in the highest style of his art), Doman had paid to her memory and to her historiographer's genius the tribute of a smile, and chivalrously forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side of this mountain Messalina, he re- called the leading events of her turbulent career, as he had heard them celebrated at his various camp- fires, and, perhaps with an unconscious attempt at self-justification, repeated that she was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind about the matter with an approving croak.
Pursuing his discovery of free gold with great zeal, which he probably credited to his conscience as a gravedigger, Mr. Barney Bree had made an unusually deep sepulchre, and it was near sunset before Mr. Doman, labouring with the leisurely delib- eration of one who has a * dead sure thing ' and no fear of an adverse claimant's enforcement of a prior right, reached the coffin and uncovered it. When
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lie had done so, lie was confronted by a difficulty for which he had made no provision : the coffin — a mere flat shell of not very well-preserved redwood boards, apparently — had no handles, and it filled the entire bottom of the excavation. The best he could do without violating the decent sanctities of the situation, was to make the excavation sufficiently longer to enable him to stand at the head of the casket, and, getting his powerful hands underneath, erect it upon its narrower end ; and this he proceeded to do. The approach of night quickened his efforts. He had no thought of abandoning his task at this stage, to resume it on the morrow under more advan- tageous conditions. The feverish stimulation of cu- pidity and the fascination of terror held him to his dismal work with an iron authority. He no longer idled, but wrought with a terrible zeal. His head uncovered, his upper garments discarded, his shirt opened at the neck and thrown back from his breast, down which ran sinuous rills of perspiration, this hardy and impenitent gold-getter and grave-robber toiled with a giant energy that almost dignified the character of his horrible purpose, and when the sun- fringes had burned themselves out along the crest- line of the western hills, and the full moon had climbed out of the shadows that lay along the purple plain, he had erected the coffin upon its foot, where it stood propped against the end of the open grave. Then, as the man, standing up to his neck in the earth at the opposite extreme of the excavation,
A HOLY TERROR 187
looked at the coffin upon wliich the moonlight now fell with a full illumination, he was thrilled with a sudden terror to observe upon it the startling appa- rition of a dark human head — the shadow of his own. For a moment this simple and natural circumstance unnerved him. The noise of his laboured breathing frightened him, and he tried to still it, but his bursting lungs would not be denied. Then, laughing half audibly and wholly without spirit, he began making movements of his head from side to side, in order to compel the apparition to repeat them. He found a comforting reassurance in asserting his com- mand over his own shadow. He was temporising, making, with unconscious prudence, a dilatory oppo- sition to an impending catastrophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil were closing in upon him, and he parleyed for time with the Inevitable.
He now observed in succession several extra- ordinary circumstances. The surface of the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened was not flat ; it presented two distinct ridges, one longitudinal and the other transverse. Where these intersected at the widest part, there was a corroded metallic plate that reflected the moonlight with a dismal lustre. Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long intervals, were rusteaten heads of nails. This frail product of the carpenter's art had been put into the grave the wrong side up !
Perhaps it was one of the humours of the camp — a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that
i88 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humourist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings unin- structed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making the inter- ment unassisted, either by choice for the conservation of his golden secret, or through public apathy, had committed a blunder which he was afterward unable or unconcerned to rectify. However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put into the earth face downward.
When terror and absurdity make alliance, the effect is frightful. This strong-hearted and daring man, this hardy nightworker among the dead, this defiant antagonist of darkness and desolation, suc- cumbed to a ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a thrilling chill — shivered, and shook his mass- ive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. He no longer breathed, and the blood in his veins, unable to abate its impetus, surged hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened with oxygen, it mounted to his head and congested his brain. His physical functions had gone over to the enemy ; his very heart was arrayed against him. He did not move ; he could not have cried out. He needed but a coffin to be dead — as dead as the death that confronted him with only the length of an open grave and the thickness of a rotting plank between.
A HOLY TERROR 189
Then, one by one, his senses returned : the tide of terror that had overwhelmed his faculties began to recede. But with the return of his senses he became singularly unconscious of the object of his fear. He saw the moonlight gilding the coffin, but no longer the coffin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turn- ing his head, he noted, curiously and with surprise, the black branches of the dead tree, and tried to estimate the length of the weatherworn rope that dangled from its ghostly hand. The monotonous barking of distant coyotes affected him as something he had heard years ago in a dream. An owl flapped awkwardly above him on noiseless wings, and he tried to forecast the direction of its flight when it should encounter the cliff that reared its illuminated front a mile away. His hearing took account of a gopher's stealthy tread in the shadow of the cactus. He was intensely observant; his senses were all alert ; but he saw not the coffin. As one can gaze at the sun until it looks black and then vanishes, so his mind, having exhausted its capacities of dread, was no longer conscious of the separate existence of anything dreadfuL The Assassin was cloaking the sword.
It was during this lull in the battle that he be- came sensible of a faint, sickening odour. At first he thought it was that of a rattlesnake, and involun- tarily tried to look about his feet. They w^ere nearly invisible in the gloom of the grave. A hoarse, gurg- ling sound, like the death-rattle in a human throat,
IQO IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
seemed to come out of the sky, and a moment later a great, black, angular shadow, like the same sound made visible, dropped curving from the topmost branch of the spectral tree, fluttered for an instant before his face, and sailed fiercely away into the mist along the creek. It was a raven. The incident recalled him to a sense of the situation, and again his eyes sought the upright coffin, now illuminated by the moon for half its length. He saw the gleam of the metallic plate, and tried without moving to decipher the inscription. Then he fell to speculating upon what was behind it. His creative imagination presented him a vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed an obstacle to his vision, and he saw the livid corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave- clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks- - the maculations of decay. By some mysterious pro- cess, his mind reverted for the first time that day to the photograph of Mary Matthews. He contrasted its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect of this dead face — the most beloved object that he knew with the most hideous that he could conceive.
The Assassin now advanced, and, displaying the blade, laid it against the victim's throat. That is to say, the man became at first dimly, then definitely, aware of aji impressive coincidence — a relation — a parallel, between the face on the card and the name
A HOLY TERROR 191
on the head-board. The one was disfigured, the other described a disfiguration. The thought took hold of him and shook him. It transformed the face that his imagination had created behind the coffin lid ; the contrast became a resemblance ; the resem- blance grew to identity. Remembering the many descriptions of Scarry's personal appearance that he had heard from the gossips of his camp-fire, he tried with imperfect success to recall the exact nature of the disfiguration that had given the woman her ugly name ; and what was lacking in his memory, fancy supplied, stamping it with the validity of conviction. In the maddening attempt to recall such scraps of the woman's history as he had heard, the muscles of his arms and hands were strained to a painful tension, as by an effort to life a great weight. His body writhed and twisted with the exertion. The tendon? of his neck stood out as tense as whipcords, and his breath came in short sharp gasps. The catastrophe could not be much longer delayed, or the agony of anticipation would leave nothing to be done by the coup de grace of verification. The scarred face behind the coffin lid would slay him through the wood.
A movement of the coffin calmed him. It came forward to within a foot of his face, growing visibly larger as it approached. The rusted metallic plate, with an inscription illegible in the moonlight, looked him steadily in the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried to brace his shoulders more firmly against the end of the excavation, and nearly fell backward
192 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
in the attempt. There was nothing to support him ; he had advanced upon his enemy, clutching the heavy knife that he had drawn from his belt. The coffin had not moved, and he smiled to think it could not retreat. Lifting his knife, he struck the heavy hilt against the metal plate with all his power. There was a sharp, ringing percussion, and with a dull clatter the whole decayed coffin lid broke in pieces and came away, falling about his feet. The quick and the dead were face to face — the frenzied, shrieking man — the woman standing tranquil in her silences. She was a holy terror !
Some months later a party of men and women belonging to the highest social circles of San Francisco passed through Hurdy-Gurdy on their way to the Yosemite Valley by a new trail. They halted there for dinner, and pending its preparation, explored the desolate camp. One of the party had been at Hurdy- Gurdy in the days of its glory. He had, indeed, been one of its prominent citizens ; and it used to be said that more money passed over his faro table in any one night than over those of all his competitors in a week ; but being now a millionaire engaged in greater enterprises, he did not deem these early suc- cesses of sufficient importance to merit the distinction of remark. His invalid wife, a lady famous in San Francisco for the costly nature of her entertainments
A HOLY TERROR 193
and her exacting rigour with regard to the social position and antecedents of those who attended them, accompanied the expedition. During a stroll among the abandoned shanties of the abandoned camp, Mr. Porfer directed the attention of his wife and friends to a dead tree on a low hill beyond Injun Creek.
'As I told you,' he said, * I passed through this camp in 18 — , and was told that no fewer than five men had been hanged here by Vigilantes at various times, and all on that tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is dangling from it yet. Let us go over and see the place.'
Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in question was perhaps the very one from whose fatal embrace his own neck had once had an escape so narrow that an hour's delay in taking himself out of that region would have spanned it.
Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a con- venient crossing, the party came upon the cleanly- picked skeleton of an animal, which Mr. Porfer, after due examination, pronounced to be that of an ass. The distinguishing ears were gone, but much of the inedible head had been spared by the beasts and birds, and the stout bridle of horsehair was intact, as was the riata, of similar material, connecting it with a picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. The wooden and metallic elements of a miner's kit lay near by. The customary remarks were made, cynical on tJie part of the gentlemen, sentimental and re- fined by the lady. A little later they stood by the
0
194 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
tree in tae cemetery, and Mr. Porfer sufficiently unbent from his dignity to place himself beneath the rotten rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his neck, somewhat, it appeared y to his own satisfaction, but greatly to the horror of his wife, to whose sensi- bilities the performance gave a smart shock.
An exclamation from one of the party gathered them all about an open grave, at the bottom of which they saw a confused mass of human bones, and the broken remnants of a coffin. "Wolves and buzzards had performed the last sad rites for pretty much all else. Two skulls were visible, and, in order to investigate this somewhat unusual redundancy, one of the younger gentlemen had the hardihood to spring into the grave and hand them up to another before Mrs. Porfer could indicate her marked disapproval of so shocking an act, which, nevertheless, she did with considerable feeling and in very choice words. Pur- suing his search among the dismal debris at the bottom of the grave, the young gentleman next handed up a rusted coffin plate, with a rudely-cut in- scription, which, with difficulty, Mr. Porfer deciphered and read aloud with an earnest and not altogether unsuccessful attempt at the dramatic effect which he deemed befitting to the occasion and his rhetorical abilities : Ma.\uelita Murphy.
Born at the Mission San Pedro — Died in
Hurdy-Gurdy,
Aged 47.
HelVs full of such.
A HOLY TERROR 195.
In deference to the piety of the reader and the nerves of Mrs. Porfer's fastidious sisterhood of both sexes let us not touch upon the painful impression produced by this uncommon inscription, further than to say that the elocutionary powers of Mr. Porfer had never before met with such spontaneous and over- whelming recognition.
The next morsel that rewarded the ghoul in the grave was a long tangle of black hair, defiled with clay; but this was such an anti-climax that it re- ceived little attention. Suddenly, with a short exclamation and a gesture of excitement, the young man ud earthed a fragment of greyish rock, and after a hurried inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As the sunlight fell upon it, it glittered with a yellow lustre — it was thickly studded with gleaming points. Mr. Porfer snat(;hed it, bent his head over it a moment, and threw it lightly away, with the simple remark : —
' Iron pyrites — fool's gold.'
The young man in the discovery shaft was a trifle disconcerted, apparently.
Meanwhile Mrs. Porfer, unable longer to endure the disagreeable business, had walked back to the tree and seated herself at its root. AVhile rearranging a tress of golden hair, which had slipped from its confinement, she was attracted by what appeared to be, and really was, the fragment of an old coat. Locking about to assure herself that so unladylike an act was not observed, she thrust aer jewelled hand
o 2
196 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
into the exposed pocket, and drew out a mouldy- pocket-book. Its contents were as follows : —
One bundle of letters, postmarked Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon.
One photograph of a beautiful girl.
One ditto of same, singularly disfigured.
One name on back of photograph — ^Jefferson Doman.'
A few moments later a group of anxious gentle- men surrounded Mrs. Porfer as she sat motionless at the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward, her fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her hus- band raised her head, exposing a face ghastly white, except the long, deforming cicatrice, familiar to all her friends, which no art could ever hide, and which now traversed the pallor of her countenance like a visible curse.
]\Iary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to be dead.
AN INHABITANT OF CABC08A
For there be divers sorts of death— some wherein the body remaineth ; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God's will) and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey — which indeed he hath ; but sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season it is raised up again in that place that the body did decay.
PoxDERiNG these words of Hali (wliom God rest) and questioning their full meaning, as one who, having an intimation yet doubts if there be not something behind other than that which he has discerned, I noted not whither I had strayed until a sudden chill wind striking my face revived in me a sense of my surroundings. I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion. Protruded at long intervals above it, stood strangely-
198 JN THE MIDST OF LIFE
shaped and sombre-coloured rocks, which seemed to have an understanding with one another and to ex- change looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and there appeared as leaders in this malevolent conspiracy of silent expectation. The day, I thought, must be far advanced, though the sun was invisible ; and although sensible that the air was raw and chill, my con- sciousness of that fact w^as rather mental than physi- cal— I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead-coloured clouds hung like a visible curse. In everything there was a menace and a portent — a hint of crime, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the grey grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth ; but no other sound or motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place.
I observed in the herbage a number of weather- worn stones, evidently shaped with tools. They were broken, covered with moss, and half sunken in the earth. Some lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles, none were vertical. They were ob- viously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had levelled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where Bome pompous tomb or ambitious monument had
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 199
once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics, tliese vestiges of vanity and memorials of affection and piety — so battered and worn and stained, so neglected, deserted, forgotten the place, that I could not help thinking myself the discoverer of the burial-ground of a prehistoric race of men — a nation whose very name was long ex- tinct.
Filled with these reflections, I was for some time heedless of the sequence of my own experiences, but soon I thought, ' How came I hither ? ' A moment's reflection seemed to make this all clear, and explain at the same time, though in a disquieting way, the singularly weird character with which my fancy had invested all that I saw and heard. I was ill. I remembered now how I had been prostrated by a sudden fever, and how my family had told me that in my periods of delirium I had constantly cried out for liberty and air, and had been held in bed to pre- vent my escape out-of-doors. Now I had eluded the vigilance of my attendants, and had wandered hither to — to where ? I could not conjecture. Clearly I was at a considerable distance from the city where I dwelt — the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. No signs of human life were anywhere visible or audible ; no rising smoke, no watchdog's bark, no lowing of cattle, no shouts of children at play — nothing but this dismal burial-place, with its air of mystery and dread, due to my own disordered brain. Was I not becoming again delirious, ^here, beyond human aid?
200 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Was it not indeed all an illusion of my madness ? I called aloud the names of my wife and sons, reached out my hands in search of theirs, even as I walked among the crumbling stones and in the withered grass.
A noise behind me caused me to turn about. A wild animal — a lynx — was approaching. The thought came to me : If I break down here in the desert — if the fever returns and I fail, this beast will be at my throat. I sprang toward it, shouting. It trotted tranquilly by, within a hand's breadth of me, and disappeared behind a rock. A moment later a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. He was ascending the far slope of a low hill whose crest was hardly to be distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view against the background of grey cloud. He was half naked, half clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow ; the other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave concealed by the tall grass. This strange apparition surprised but did not alarm, and, taking such a course as to intercept him, I met him almost face to face, accosting him with the saluta- tion, ^ God keep you ! '
He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace.
* Good stranger,' I continued, ' I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa.'
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 201
The man broke into a barbarous cbanfc in an "unknown tongue, passing on and away. An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally, and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward I saw, through a sudden rift in the clouds, Aldebaran and the Hyades ! In all this there was a hint of night — the lynx, the man with a torch, the owl. Yet I saw — I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what aw^fal spell did I exist ?
I seated myself at the root of a great tree, seriously to consider what it was best to do. That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet recognised a ground of doubt in the conviction. Of fever I had no trace. I had, withal, a sense of exhilaration and vigour altogether unknown to me — a feeling of mental and physical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert; I could feel the air as a ponderous sub- stance, I could hear the silence.
A great root of the giant tree against whose trunk I leaned as I sat held inclosed in its grasp a slab of granite, a portion of which protruded into a recess formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected from the weather, though greatly decomposed. Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten away, its face deeply furrowed and scaled. Glittering particles of mica were visible in the earth beneath it — vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had apparently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. The tree's
202 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
exacting roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner.
A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone ; I saw the low-relieved letters of an inscription and bent to read it. God in heaven ! my name in full I— the date of my birth ! — the date of my death !
A level shaft of rosy light illuminated the whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet in terror. The sun was rising in the east. I stood between the tree and his broad red disk — no shadow dark- ened the trunk ! A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on their haunches, singly and in groups, on the summits of irregular mounds and tumuli, filling a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon ; and then I knew that these were the ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa.
Such are the facts imparted to the medium Bayrolles by the spirit Hoseib Alar Robardin,
TIIU BOABBUD WINBOW
In 1830, only a few miles back from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier — restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly comfortable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity v/hich to-day we should call indigence than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed further westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain comforts which they had voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settle- ments, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs, surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which he might, if needful, have claimed by
204 I^ THE MIDST OF LIFE
right of undisturbed possession. There were evi- dences of 'improvement' — a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the axe at some distant day. Apparently the man's zeal for agricul- ture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes.
The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted with travers- ing poles and its 'chinking' of clay, had a single door, and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up — nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occu- pant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot, the recluse had commonly been seen sunning him- self on his doorstep if heaven had provided sun- shine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as in due time you shall see.
The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his ageing. His hair and long, full beard were white, his grey, lustreless eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles, which appeared to belong to
THE BOARDED WINDOW 205
two intersecting systems. In figure lie was tall and spare, with a stoop of tlie shoulders — a burden bearer. I never saw him ; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.
One day Mr. Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I only know that, with what was probably a sense of the fitness of things, the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter of this true story — excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ven- tured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost w^hich every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. As this record grows naturally out of my personal relation to what it records, that circumstance, as a part of the relation, has a certain relevancy. But there is an earlier chapter — that supplied by my grandfather.
When Mr. Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his axe to hew out a farm '- — the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support — he
2o6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
was young, strong, and full of hope. In tHat Eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of her name ; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent, and the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt ; but God forbid that I should share it ! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of the man's widowed life ; for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that ?
One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his wife prostrate with fever and delirious. There was no physician within miles, no neighbour, nor was she in a condi- tion to be left, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she passed into a comatose state, and so passed away, with never a gleam of returning reason.
From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the details of the out- line picture drawn by my grandfather. When con- vinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred duty he blundered now and again, did certain things incor-
THE BOARDED WINDOW 207
rectly, and others which he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failures to accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him with aston- ishment, like that of- a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiar natural- laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep — surprised and a little ashamed ; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead. ' To-morrow,' he said aloud, ' I shall have to make the coffin and dig the grave ; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight, but now — she is dead, of course, but it is all right — it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be as bad as they &eeni.'
He stood over the body in the fading light, ad- justing the hair and putting the finishing touches on the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, w4th soulless care. And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was right — that he should have her again as before, and every- thing explained. He had had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagina- tion rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard hit ; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist of powers as various as the characters of the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it
2o8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life ; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crush- ing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, then laying his arms upon the table's edge, he dropped his face into them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening wood! But the man did not move. Again and nearer than before sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream; for Murlock was asleep.
Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher awoke, and, lifting his head from his arms, intently listened — he knew not why. There in the black darkness by the side of his dead, recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes to see — he knew not what. His senses all were alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides as if to assist the silence. Who — what had waked him, and where was it ?
Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he
THE BOARDED WINDOW 209
heard, a light, soft step — another — sounds as of bare feet upon the floor !
He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he waited — waited there in the darkness through centuries of such dread as one may know yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. Then ensued a scuffling and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet, and terror had by excess forfeited control of his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there !
There is a point at which terror may turn to madness ; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, and with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lib up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth fixed in her throat. Then
2IO IN 7 HE MIDST OF LIFE
there was darkness blacker than before, and silence ; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the woods vocal with songs of birds.
The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken ; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal's ear.
TEE MIDDLE TOE OF TEE BIQET FOOT
It is well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one person of unbiassed mind entertains a doubt of it ; incredulity is confined to those opinionated people who will be called 'cranks' as soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the house is haunted is of two kinds : the testimony of disinterested witnesses who have had ocular proof, and that of the house itself. The former may be disregarded and ruled out on any of the various grounds of objection which may be urged against it by the ingenious ; but facts within the observation of all are fundamental and controlling.
In the first place, the Manton house has been unoccupied by mortals for more than ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly falling into decay — a circumstance which in itself the judicious will hardly venture to ignore. It stands a little way off the loneliest reach of the Marshall and Harriston road, in an opening which was once a farm and is still dis-
p2
212 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
figured with strips of rotting fence and half covered with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil long unacquainted with the plough. The house itself is in tolerably good condition, though badly weather- stained and in dire need of attention from the glazier, the smaller male population of the region having attested in the manner of its kind its disap- proval of dwellings without dwellers. The house is two stories in height, nearly square, its front pierced by a single doorway flanked on each side by a win- dow boarded up to the very top. Corresponding windows above, not protected, serve to admit light and rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass and weeds grow pretty rankly all about, and a few shade trees, somewhat the worse for wind and leaning all in one direction, seem to be making a concerted effort to run away. In short, as the Marshall town humourist explained in the columns of the Adcance, ^ the proposition that the !Manton house is badly haunted is the only logical conclusion from the premises.' The fact that in this dwelling Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats of his wife and two small children, removing at once to another part of the country, has no doubt done its share in directing public attention to the fitness of the place for super- natural phenomena.
To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a waggon. Three of them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched the team
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 213
to the only remaining post of what had been a fence. The fourth remained seated in the waggon. * Come,' said one of his companions, approaching him, while the others moved away in the direction of the dwelling — ' this is the place.'
The man addressed was deathly pale and trembled visibly. ^ By God ! ' he said harshly, ' this is a trick, and it looks to me as if you were in it.'
' Perhaps I am,' the other said, looking him straight in the face and speaking in a tone which had something of contempt in it. ' You will re- member, however, that the choice of place was, with your own assent, left to the other side. Of course if you are afraid of spooks '
'I am afraid of nothing,' the man interrupted with another oath, and sprang to the ground. The two then joined the others at the door, which one of them had already opened with some diflSculty, caused by rust of lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it was dark, but the man who had unlocked the door produced a candle and matches and made a light. He then unlocked a door on their right as they stood in the passage. This gave them entrance to a large, square room, w^hich the candle but dimly lighted. The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which partly muffled their footfalls. Cobwebs were in the angles of the walls and depended from the ceiling like strips of rotting lace, making undulatory move- ments in the disturbed air. The room had two windows in adjoining sides, but from neither could
214 ^^ THE MIDST OF LIFE
anything be seen except the rough inner surfaces of boards a few inches from the glass. There was no fireplace, no furniture ; there was nothing. Besides the cobwebs and the dust, the four men were the only objects there which were not a part of the architecture. Strange enough they looked in the yellow light of the candle. The one who had so reluctantly alighted was especially ' spectacular ' — he might have been called sensational. He was of middle age, heavily built, deep chested and broad- shouldered. Looking at his figure, one would have said that he had a giant's strength ; at his face, that he would use it like a giant. He was clean shaven, his hair rather closely cropped and grey. His low forehead was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and over the nose these became vertical. The heavy black brows followed the same law, saved from meeting only by an upward turn at what would otherwise have been the point of contact. Deeply sunken beneath these, glowed in the obscure ligbt a pair of eyes of uncertain colour, but, obviously enough, too small. There was something forbidding in their expression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The nose was well enough, as noses go ; one does not expect much of noses. All that was sinister in the man's face seemed accentuated by an unnatural pallor — he appeared altogether bloodless.
The appearance of the other men was sufficiently commonplace : they were such persons as one meets
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 215
and forgets that he met. All were younger than the man described, between whom and the eldest of the others, who stood apart, there was a^Dparently no kindly feeling. They avoided looking at one an- other.
* Gentlemen/ said the man holding the candle and keys, ' I believe everything is right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser ? '
The man standing apart from the group bowed and smiled.
'• And you, Mr. Grossmith ? '
The heavy man bowed and scowled.
' You will please remove your outer clothing.'
Their hats, coats, waistcoats, and neckwear were soon removed and thrown outside the door, in the passage. The man with the candle now nodded, and the fourth man — he who had urged Mr. Grossmith to leave the waggon — produced from the pocket of his overcoat two long, murderous-looking bowie knives, which he drew from the scabbards.
* They are exactly alike,' he said, presenting one to each of the two principals — for by this time the dullest observer would have understood the nature of this meeting. It was to be a duel to the death.
Each combatant took a knife, examined it critically near the candle and tested the strength of blade and handle across his lifted knee. Their persons were then searched in turn, each by the second of the other.
' If it is agreeable to you, Mr. Grossmith,' said
2i6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
tlie man holding the light, ' you will place yourself in that corner.'
He indicated the angle of the room farthest from the door, to which Grossmith retired, his second parting from him with a grasp of the hand which had nothing of cordiality in it. In the angle nearest the door Mr. Rosser stationed himself, and, after a w^hispered consultation, his second left him, joining the other near the door. At that moment the candle was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in profound darkness. This may have been done by a draught from the open door ; whatever the cause, the effect w^as appalling !
* Gentlemen,' said a voice which sounded strangely unfamiliar in the altered condition affecting the relations of the senses, ' gentlemen, you will not move until you hear the closing of the outer door.'
A sound of trampling ensued, the closing of the inner door ; and finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook the entire building.
A few minutes later a belated farmer's boy met a waggon which was being driven furiously toward the town of Marshall. He declared that behind the two figures on the front seat stood a third with its hands upon the bowed shoulders of the others, who appeared to struggle vainly to free themselves from its grasp. This figure, unlike the others, was clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded the waggon as it passed the haunted house. As the lad could boast a considerable former experience with the
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 217
supernatural thereabout, his word had the weight justly due to the testimony of an expert. The story eventually appeared in the Advance^ with some slight literary embellishments and a concluding intimation that the gentlemen referred to would be allowed the use of the paper's columns for their version of the night's adventure. But the privilege remained without a claimant.
II
The events which led up to this ' dael in tho dark' were simple enough. One evening three young men of the town of Marshall were sitting in a quiet corner of the porch of the village hotel, smoking and discussing such matters as three edu- cated young men of a Southern village would naturally find interesting. Their names were King, Sancher, and Rosser. At a little distance, within easy hearing but taking no part in the conversation, sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others. They merely knew that on his arrival by the stage coach that afternoon he had written in the hotel register the name Robert Grossmith. He had not been observed to speak to anyone except the hotel clerk. He seemed, indeed, singularly fond of his own company — or, as the personnel of the Advance expressed it, 'grossly addicted to evil associations.' But then it should be said in justice to the stranger that the personnel was himself of a too convivial disposition fairly to judge one differently gifted, and
2i8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an effort at an * interview.'
* I hate any kind of deformity in a woman,' said King, ^whether natural or — or acquired. I have a theory that any physical defect has its correlative mental and moral defect.'
* I infer, then,' said Rosser, gravely, ' that a lady lacking the advantage of a nose would find the struggle to become Mrs. King an arduous enterprise.
' Of course you may put it that way,' was the reply; 'but, seriously, I once threw over a most charming girl on learning, quite accidentally, that she had suffered amputation of a toe. My conduct was brutal, if you like, but if I had married that girl I should have been miserable and should have made her so.'
* Whereas,' said Sancher, with a light laugh, ' by marrying a gentleman of more liberal views she escaped with a cut throat.'
' Ah, you know to whom I refer ! Yes, she married Manton, but I don't know about his liberality ; I'm not sure but he cut her throat because he discovered that she lacked that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe of the right foot.'
' Look at that chap ! ' said Rosser in a low voice, his eyes fixed upon the stranger.
That person was obvious-y listening intently to the conversation.
' Damn his impudence ! ' whispered King, ' what ought we to do ? '
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 219
'That's an easy one/ Eosser replied, rising. ' Sir,' he continued, addressing the stranger, ' I think it would be better if j^ou would remove your chair to the other end of the verandah. The presence of gentlemen is evidently an unfamiliar situation to you.'
The man sprang to his feet and strode forward with clenched hands, his face white with rage. All were now standing. Sancher stepped between the belligerents.
' You are hasty and unjust,' he said to Rosser ; nhis gentleman has done nothing to deserve such language.'
But Rosser would not withdraw a word. By the custom of the country and the time, there could be but one outcome to the quarrel.
' I demand the satisfaction due to a gentleman,' said the stranger, who had become more calm. ' I have not an acquaintance in this region. Perhaps you, sir,' bowing to Sancher, ' will be kind enough to represent me in this matter.'
Sancher accepted the trust — somewhat reluc- tantly, it must be confessed, for the man's appearance and manner were not at all to his liking. King, who during the colloquy had hardly removed his eyes from the stranger's face, and had not spoken a word, consented with a nod to act for Rosser, and the upshot of it was that, the principals having retired, a meeting was arranged for the next evening. The nature of the arrangements has been already
220 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark room was once a commoner feature of South-western life than it is likely to be again. How thin a veneering of ' chivalry ' covered the essential brutality of the code under which such encounters were possible, w^e shall see,
III
In the blaze of a midsummer noonday, the old Manton house was hardly true to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it warmly and affectionately, with evident unconscious- ness of its bad reputation. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow, not rankly, but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming lights and shadows, and populous with pleasant- voiced birds, the neglected shade trees no longer struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their burdens of sun and song. Even in the glassless upper windows was an expression of peace and con- tentment, due to the light within. Over the stony fields the visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity which is an attribute of the supernatural.
Such was the aspect under which the place presented itself to Sheriff Adams and two other men w^ho had come out from Marshall to look at it. One of these men was Mr. King, tli3 sheriff's deputy; the other, whose name was Brewer, was a brother of
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 221
the late Mrs. Manton. Under a beneficent law of the State relating to property which has been for a certain period abandoned by its owner, whose resi- dence cannot be ascertained, the sheriff was the legal custodian of the Manton farm and the appurtenances thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased sister. By a mere coincidence the visit was made on the day after the night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing : he had been ordered to accompany his superior, and at the moment could think of nothing more prudent than simulated alacrity in obedience. He had intended going anyhow, but in other company.
Carelessly opening the front door, which to his surprise was not locked, the sheriff was amazed to see, lying on the floor of the passage into which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Exami- nation showed it to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats, waistcoats, and scarves, all in a remarkably good state of preservation, albeit some- what defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was equally astonished, but Mr. King's emo- tion is not of record. With a new and lively interest in his own actions, the sheriff now unlatched and pushed open a door on the right, and the three entered. The room was apparently vacant — no ; as
222 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
their eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light,
something was visible in the farthest angle of the wall. It was a human figure — that of a man crouch- ing close in the corner. Something in the attitude made the intruders halt when they had barely passed the threshold. The figure more and more clearly defined itself. The man was upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the fingers spread and crooked like claws ; the white face turned upward on the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead — dead of terror ! Yet, with the ex- ception of a knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was in the room.
In the thick dust which covered the floor were some confused footprints near the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows, was the trail made by the man himself in reaching his corner. Instinctively in approaching the body the three men now followed that trail. The sheriflf grasped one of the outthrown arms ; it was as rigid as iron, and the application of a gentle force rocked the entire body without altering the relation of its parts. Brewer, pale with terror, gazed intently into the distorted face. ^ God of mercy ! ' he suddenly cried, ' it is Manton ! '
' You are right,' said King, with an evident
THE MIDDLE TOE OE THE RIGHT FOOT 223
attempt at calmness : ' I knew Manton. He then wore a full beard and his hair long, but this is he.'
He might have added : ' I recognised him when he challenged Rosser. I told Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible trick. When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, for- getting his clothes in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt — alt through the discredit- able proceedings we knew whom we were dealing with, murderer and coward that he was ! '
But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not once moved from the corner where he had been stationed, that his posture was that of neither attack nor defence, that he had dropped his weapon, that he had obviously perished of sheer terror of something that he saw — • these were circumstances which Mr. King's disturbed intelligence could not rightly comprehend.
Groping in intellectual darkness for a clue to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically downward, as is the way of one who ponders momen- tous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day, and in the presence of living com- panions, struck him with an invincible terror. In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor — leading from the door by which they bad entered, straight across the room to within a yard of Manton's crouching corpse — were three parallel lines of foot- prints— light but definite impressions of bare feet,
224 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
the outer ones those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which they ended they did not return ; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt attention, horribly pale.
' Look at that ! ' he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest print of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and stood. ^The middle toe is missing — it was Gertrude ! '
Gertrude was the late Mrs. Mantou, sister to Mr, Brewer,
HAITA THE SHEPHERD
In tlie teart of Haita tlie illusions of youth liad not been supplanted by those of age and experience. His thoughts were pure and pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun, and went forth to pray at the shrine of Hastur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was pleased. After performance of this pious rite Hai'ta unbarred the gate of the fold, and with a cheerful mind drove his flock afield, eating his morning meal of curds and oatcake as he went, occasionally paus- ing to add a few berries, cold with dew, or to drink of the waters that came away from the hills to join the stream in the middle of the valley and be borne along with it, he knew not whither.
During the long summer day, as his sheep cropped the good gi-ass which the gods had made to grow for them, or lay with their forelegs doubled under their breasts and indolently chewed the cud, Haita, reclining in the shadow of a tree, or sitting upon a rock, played so sweet music upon his reed pipe that sometimes from the corner of his eye he got accidental glimpses of the minor sylvan deities,
Q
226 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
leaning forward out of the copse to hear ; but if he looked at them directly, they vanished. From this — for he must be thinking if he would not turn into one of his own sheep — he drew the solemn inference that happiness may come if not sought, but if looked for will never be seen ; for, next to the favour of Hastur, who never disclosed himself, Haita most valued the friendly interest of his neighbours, the shy immortals of the wood and stream. At nightfall he drove his flock back to the fold, saw that the gate was secure, and retired to his cave for refreshment and for dreams.
So passed his life, one day like another, save when the storms uttered the wrath of an offended god. Then Haita cowered in his cave, his face hidden in his hands, and prayed that he alone might be pun- ished for his sins and the world saved from destruc- tion. Sometimes when there was a great rain, and the stream came out of its banks, compelling him to urge his terrified flock to the uplands, he interceded for the people in the great cities, which he had been told lay in the plain beyond the two blue hills which formed the gateway of his valley.
* It is kind of thee, 0 Hastur,' so he prayed, ' to give me mountains so near to my dwelling and my fold that I and my sheep can escape the angry torrents ; but the rest of the world thou must thyself deliver in some way that I know not of, or I will no loaager worship thee.'
And Hastur, knowing that Haita was a youth
HAITA THE SHEPHERD 227
who kept his word, spared the cities and turned the waters into the sea.
So he had lived since he could remember. He could not rightly conceive any other mode of exis- tence. The holy hermit who lived at the head of the valley, a full hour's journey away, from whom he had heard the tale of the great cities where dwelt people — poor souls ! — who had no sheep, gave him no knowledge of that early time, when, so he reasoned, he must have been small and helpless like a lamb.
It was through thinking on these mysteries and marvels, and on that horrible change to silence and decay which he felt sure must sometime come to him, as he had seen it come to so many of his flock — as it came to all living things except the birds — that Haita first became conscious how miserable was his lot.
' It is necessary,' he said, ' that I know whence and how I came ; for how can one perform his duties unless able to judge what they are by the way in which he was intrusted with them ? And what contentment can I have when I know not how long it is going to last ? Perhaps before another sun I may be changed, and then what will become of the sheep ? What, indeed, will have become of me ? '
Pondering these things, Haita became melan- choly and morose. He no longer spoke cheerfully to his flock, nor ran with alacrity to the shrine of
Q 2
228 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Hastur. In every breeze lie heard whispers of malign deities whose existence he now first observed. Every cloud was a portent signifying disaster, and the darkness was full of new terrors. His reed pipe when applied to his lips gave out no melody but a dismal wail ; the sylvan and riparian intelligences no longer thronged the thicket- side to listen, but fled from the sound, as he knew by the stirred leaves and bent flowers. He relaxed his vigilance, and many of his sheep strayed away into the hills and were lost. Those that remained became lean and ill for lack of good pasturage, for he would not seek it for them, but conducted them day after day to the same spot, through mere abstraction, while puzzling about life and death — of immortality he knew nothing.
One day, while indulging in the gloomiest reflec- tions, he suddenly sprang from the rock upon which he sat, and, with a determined gesture of the right hand, exclaimed : * I will no longer be a suppliant for knowledge which the gods withhold. Let them look to it that they do me no wrong. I will do my duty as best I can, and if I err, upon their own heads be it.'
Suddenly, as he spoke, a great brightness fell about him, causing him to look upward, thinking the sun had burst through a rift in the clouds ; but there were no clouds. Hardly more than an arm's length away stood a, beautiful maiden. So beautiful she was that the flowers about her feet folded their petals in despair and bent their heads in token of
HAITA THE SHEPHERD 229
submission ; so sweet her look tliat the humming birds thronged her eyes, thrusting their thirsty bills almost into them, and the wild bees were about her lips. And such was her brightness that the shadows of all objects lay divergent from her feet, turning as she moved.
Hai'ta was entranced. Rising, he knelt before her in adoration, and she laid her hand upon his head.
' Come,' she said in a voice which had the music of all the bells of his flock — ' come, thou art not to worship me, who am no goddess, but if thou art truthful and dutiful, I will abide with thee.'
Hai'ta seized her hand, and stammering his joy and gratitude, arose, and hand in hand they stood and smiled in one another's eyes. He gazed upon her with reverence and rapture. He said : ' I pray thee, lovely maid, tell me thy name and whence and why thou comest.'
At this she laid a warning finger on her lip and began to withdraw. Her beauty underwent a visible alteration that made him shudder, he knew not why, for still she was beautiful. The landscape was darkened by a giant shadow sweeping across the valley with the speed of a vulture. In the obscurity the maiden's figure grew dim and indistinct and her voice seemed to come from a distance, as she said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach: 'Presumptuous and ungrateful man ! must I then so soon leave thee ? Would nothing do but thou must at once break the eternal compact ? '
230 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
Inexpressibly grieved, Hai'ta fell upon liis knees and implored her to remain — rose and sought her in the deepening darkness — ran in circles, calling to her aloud, but all in vain. She was no longer visible, but out of the gloom he heard her voice saying : * Nay, thou shalt not have me by seeking. Go to thy duty, faithless shepherd, or we never meet again.'
Night had fallen, the wolves were howling in the hills, and the terrified sheep crowding about his feet. In the demands of the hour he forgot his disappoint- ment, drove his flock to the fold, and repairing to the place of worship poured out his heart in gratitude to Hastur for permitting him to save his flock, then retired to his cave and slept.
When Haita awoke, the sun was high and shone in at his cave, illuminating it wdth a great glory. And there, beside him, sat the maiden. She smiled upon him with a smile that seemed the visible music of his pipe of reeds. He dared not speak, fearing to offend her as before, for he knew not what he could venture to say.
' Because,' she said, ' thou didst thy duty by the flock, and didst not forget to thank Hastur for stay- ing the wolves of the night, I am come to thee again. Wilt thou have me for a companion ? '
* Who would not have thee for ever ? ' replied Hai'ta. ' Oh ! never again leave me until — until I — change and become silent and motionless.'
Hai'ta had no word for death.
' I wish, indeed,' he continued, * that thou wert of
HA IT A THE SHEPHERD 231
my own sex, that we might wrestle and run races and so never tire of being together.'
At these words the maiden arose and passed out of the cave, and Ha'ita, springing from his couch of fragrant boughs to overtake and detain her, observed, to his astonishment, that the rain was falling and the stream in the middle of the valley had come out of its bauks. The sheep were bleating in terror, for the rising waters had invaded their fold. And there was danger for the unknown cities of the distant plain.
It was many days before Haita saw the maiden again. One day he was returning from the head of the valley, where he had gone with ewe's milk and oatcake and berries for the holy hermit, who was too old and feeble to provide himself with food.
^ Poor old man ! ' he said aloud, as he trudged along homeward. ' I will return to-morrow and bear him on my back to my own dwelling, where I can care for him. Doubtless it is for that that Hastur has reared me all these years, and gives me health and strength.'
As he spcke, the maiden, clad in glittering gar- ments, met him in the path with a smile which took away his breath.
' I am come again,' she said, ' to dwell with thee if thou wilt now have me, for none else will. Thou mayest have learned wisdom, and art willing to take me as I am, nor care to know.'
Ha'ita threw himself at her feet. ' Beautiful being,' he cried, ' if thou wilt but deign to accept all
232 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
the devotion of my heart and soul — after Hastur be served — it is yours ' for ever. But, alas ! thou arfc capricious and wayward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive and remain always with me.'
Scarcely had he finished speaking when a troop of wolves sprang out of the hills, and came racing toward him with crimson mouths and fiery eyes. The maiden a<?ain vanished, and he turned and fled for his life. Nor did he stop until he was in the cot of the holy hermit, whence he had set out. Hastily barring the door against the wolves, he cast himself upon the ground and wept.
^ My son,' said the hermit from his couch of straw, freshly gathered that morning by Hai'ta's hands, * it is not like thee to weep for wolves — tell me what sorrow has befallen thee, that age may minister to the hurts of youth with such balms as it hath of its wis- dom.*
Haita told him all : how thrice he had met the radiant maid, and thrice she had left him forlorn. He related minutely all that had passed between them, omitting no word of what had been said.
When he had ended, the holy hermit was a moment silent, then said : ' My son, I have attended to thy story, and I know the maiden. I have my- self seen her, as have many. Know, then, that her name, which she would not even permit thee to inquire, is Happiness. Thou saidst the truth to
HAITA THE SHEPHERD 233
her, tliat slie was capricious, for slie imposes condi- tions that man cannot fulfil, and delinquency is punished by desertion. She cometh only when un- sought, and will not be questioned. One manifesta- tion of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression of misgiving, and she is away ! How long didst thou have her at any time before she fled ? '
* But a single instant,' answered Hai'ta, blushing with shame at the confession. ' Each time I drove her away in one moment.'
' Unfortunate youth ! ' said the holy hermit, ' but for thine indiscretion thou mightst have had her for two.'
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE
Coronado, June 20. I FIND myself more and more interested in him. It is not, I am sure, liis — do you know any noun corre- sponding to the adjective ' handsome ' ? One does not like to say ' beauty ' when speaking of a man. He is handsome enough, heaven knows ; I should not even care to trust 3'ou with him — faithfulest of all possible wives that you are — when he looks his best, as he always does. Nor do I think the fascina- tion of his manner has much to do with it. You recollect that the charm of art inheres in that which is undefinable, and to you and me, my dear Irene, I fancy there is rather less of that in the branch of art under consideration than to girls in their first season. I fancy I know how my fine gentleman produces many of his effects, and could, perhaps, give him a pointer on heightening them. Nevertheless, his manner is something truly delightful. I suppose what interests me chiefly is the man's brains. His conversation is the best I have ever heard, and alto- gether unlike anyone else's. He seems to know everything, as, indeed, he ought, for he has been
236 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
everywhere, read everything, seen all there is to see — sometimes, I think, rather more than is good for him — and had acquaintance with the qneerest people. And then his voice — Irene, when I hear it I actually feel as if I ought to have imid at tlie dooVj though of course it is my own door.
July 3. I fear my remarks about Dr. Barritz must have been, being thoughtless, very silly, or you would not have written of him with such levity, not to say disrespect. Believe me, dearest, he has more dignity and seriousness (of the kind, I mean, which is not inconsistent with a manner sometimes playful and always charming) than any of the men that you and I ever met. And young Raynor — you knew Raynor at Monterey — tells me that the men all like him, and that he is treated with something like deference everywhere. There is a myst'?r3', too — something about his connection with the Blavatsky people in Northern India. Raynor either would not or could not tell me the particulars. I infer that Dr. Barritz is thought — don't you dare to laugh — a magician ! Could anything be finer than that ? An ordinary mystery is not, of course, as good as a scandal, but when it relates to dark and dreadful practices — to the exercise of unearthly powers — could anything be more j)iquant ? It explains, too, the singular influence the man has upon me. It is the undefinable in his art — black art. Seriously, dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 237
eyes ■^^•itll those unfathomable orbs of his, which I have already vainly attempted to describe to you. How dreadful if he have the power to make one fall in love ! Do you know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power — outside of Sepoy ?
July 16.
The strangest thing ! Last evening while Auntie was attending one of the hotel hops (I hate them) Dr. Barritz called. It was scandalously late — I actually believe he had talked with Auntie in the ballroom, and learned from her that I was alone. I had been all the evening contriving how to worm out of him the truth about his connection with the Thugs in Sepoy, and all of that black business, but the moment he fixed his eyes on me (for I admitted him, I'm ashamed to say) I was helpless, I trembled, I blushed, I — 0 Irene, Irene, I love the man beyond expression, and you know how it is yourself !
Fancy ! I, an ugly duckling from Redhorse — daughter (they say) of old Calamity Jim — certainly his heiress, with no living relation but an absurd old aunt, who spoils me a thousand and fifty ways — abso- lutely destitute of everything but a million dollars and a hope in Paris, — I daring to love a god like him ! My dear, if I had you here, I could tear your hair out with mortification.
I am convinced that he is aware of my feeling, for he stayed but a few moments, said nothing but what another man might have said half as well, and pretending that he had an engagement went away.
238 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
I learned to-day (a little bird told me — the bell bird) that he went straight to bed. How does that strike you as evidence of exemplary habits ?
July 17.
That little wretch, Eaynor, called yesterday, and his babble set me almost wild. He never runs down — that is to say, when he exterminates a score of reputations, more or less, he does not pause between one reputation and the next. (By the v/ay, he inquired about you, and his manifestations of interest in you had, I confess, a good deal of vraisem- hlance.) Mr. Raynor observes no game laws ; like Death (which he would inflict if slander were fatal) he has all seasons for his own. But I like him, for we knew one another at Redhorse when we were young and true-hearted and barefooted. He was known in those far fair days as ' Giggles,' and I — O Irene, can you ever forgive me ? — I was called ' Gunny.' God knows why ; perhaps in allusion to the material of my pinafores ; perhaps because the name is in alliteration with ' Giggles,' for Gig and I were inseparable playmates, and the miners may have thought it a delicate compliment to recognise some kind of relationship between us.
Later, we took in a third — another of Adversity's brood, who, like Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, had a chronic inability to adjudicate the rival claims (to himself) of Frost and Famine. Be- tween him and the grave there was seldom anything more than a single suspender and the hope of a meal
AN HEIRESS IROM REDHORSE 239
wliicli would at the same time support life and make it insupportable. He literally j)icked up a precarious living for himself and an aged mother by ' chloriding the dumps,' that is to say, the miners permitted him to search the heaps of waste rock for such pieces of * pay ore ' as had been overlooked ; and these he sacked up and sold at the Syndicate Mill. He became a member of our firm — ' Gunny, Giggles, and Dumps ' thenceforth — through my favour ; for I could not then, nor can I now, be indifferent to his courage and prowess in defending against Giggles the immemorial right of his sex to insult a strange and unprotected female — myself. After old Jim struck it in the Calamity, and I began to wear shoes and go to school, and in emulation Giggles took to washing his face, and became Jack Raynor, of Wells, Fargo & Co., and old Mrs. Barts was herself chlorided to her fathers. Dumps drifted over to San Juan Smith and turned stage driver, and was killed by road agents, and so forth.
Why do I tell you all this, dear ? Because it is heavy on my heart. Because I walk the Valley of Humility. Because I am subduing myself to per- manent consciousness of my unworthiness to unloose the latchet of Dr. Barritz's shoe. Because, oh dear, oh dear, there's a cousin of Damps at this hotel ! I haven't spoken to him. I never had any acquaint- ance with him, but — do you suppose he has recog- nised me ? Do, please, give me in your next your candid, sure-enough opinion about it, and say you
240 /A" THE MIDST OF LIFE
don't think so. Do you tliink He knows about me already and that that is why He left me last evening when He saw that I blushed and trembled like a fool under his eyes ? You know I can't bribe all the newspapers, and I can't go back on anybody who was good to Gunny at Redhorse — not if I'm pitched out of society into the sea. So the skeleton some- times rattles behind the door. I never cared much before, as you know, but now — now it is not the same. Jack Raynor I am sure of — he will not tell him. He seems, indeed, to hold him in such respect as hardly to dare speak to him at all, and I'm a good deal that way myself. Dear, dear ! I wish I had something besides a million dollars ! If Jack were three inches taller I'd marry him alive and go back to Redhorse and wear sackcloth again to the end of my miserable days.
July 25. "We had a perfectly splendid sunset last evening, and I must tell you all about it. I ran away from Auntie and everybody, and was walking alone on the beach. I expect you to believe, you infidel ! that I had not looked out of my window on the seaward side of the hotel and seen him walking alone on the beach. If you are not lost to every feeling of womanly delicacy you will accept my statement without question. I soon established myself under my sunshade and had for some time been gazing out dreamily over the sea, when he approached, walking close to the edge of the water — it was ebb ti^e. I
AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 241
assure you the wet sand actually brightened about his feet ! As he approached me, he lifted his hat, saying, ' Miss Dement, may I sit with you ? — or will you walk with me ? '
The possibility that neither might be agreeable seems not to have occurred to him. Did you ever know such assurance ? Assurance ? My dear, it was gall, downright (jail I Well, I didn't find it wormwood, and replied, with my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, ^ I — I shall be pleased to do anything.^ Could words have been more stupid ? There are depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my soul, which are simply bottomless !
He extended his hand, smiling, and I delivered mine into it without a moment's hesitation, and when his fingers closed about it to assist me to my feet, the consciousness that it trembled made me blush worse than the red west. I got up, however, and, after a while, observing that he had not let go my hand, I pulled on it a little, but unsuccessfully. He simply held on, saying nothing, but looking down into my face with some kind of a smile — I didn't know — how could I ? — whether it was affectionate, derisive, or what, for I did not look at him. How beautiful he was ! — with the red fires of the sunset burning in the depths of his eyes.' Do you know, dear, if the Thugs and Experts of the Blavatsky region have any special kind of eyes? Ah, you should have seen his superb attitude, the godlike inclination of his head as he stood over me after I
242 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
had got upon my feet ! It was a noble picture, but I soon destroyed it, for I began at once to sink again to the earth. There was only one thing for him to do, and he did it; he supported me with an arm about my waist.
* Miss Dement, are you ill ? ' he said.
It was not an exclamation ; there was neither alarm nor solicitude in it. If he had added : ' I suppose that is about what I am expected to say,' he would hardly have expressed his sense of the situa- tion more clearly. His manner filled me with shame and indignation, for I was suffering acutely. I wrenched my hand out of his, grasped the arm supporting me, and pushing myself free, fell plump into the sand and sat helpless. My hat had fallen off in the struggle, and my hair tumbled about my face and shoulders in the most mortifying way.
* Go away from me,' I cried, half choking. ' 0, flease go away, you — you Thug! How dare you think that when my leg is asleep ? '
I actually said those identical words ! And then I broke down and sobbed. Irene, I blubbered I
His manner altered in an instant — I could see that much through my fingers and hair. He dropped on one knee beside me, parted the tangle of hair, and said, in the tenderest way : ' My poor girl, God knows I have not intended to pain you. How should I ? — I who love you — I who have loved you for — for years and years ! '
He had pulled my wet hands away from my
A.V HEIRESS EROM REDHORSE 243
face and was covering them witli kisses, ^^fy clieeks were like two coals, my whole face was flaming, and, I think, steaming. What could I do ? I hid it on his shoulder — there was no other place. And, 0 my dear friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled, and how I wanted to kick !
We sat so for a long time. He had released one of my hands to pass his arm about me again, and I possessed myself of my handkerchief and was drying my eyes and my nose. I would not look up until that was done ; he tried in vain to push me a little away and gaze into my eyes. Presently, when it was all right, and it had grown a bit dark, I lifted my head, looked him straight in the eyes, and smiled my best — my level best, dear.
^What do you mean,' I said, 'by "years and years " ? '
' Dearest,' he replied, very gravely, very earnestly, *in the absence of the sunken cheeks, the hollow eyes, the lank hair, the slouching gait, the rags, dirt, and youth, can you not — will you not under- stand ? Gunny, I'm Dumps ! '
In a moment I was upon my feet and he upon his. I seized him by the lapels of his coat and peered into his handsome face in the deepening darkness. I was breathless with excitement.
' And you are not dead ? ' I asked, hardly know- ing what I said.
' Only dead in love, dear. I recovered from the road agent's bullet, but this, I fear, is fatal.'
244 /^V THE MIDST OF LIFE
' But about Jack — Mr. Ray nor ? Don't you know '
' I am asliamed to say, darling, that it was througli that unworthy person's invitation that I came here from Vienna.'
Irene, they have played it upon your affectionate friend,
Mary Jane Dement.
P.S. — The worst of it is that there is no mystery. That was an invention of Jack to arouse my curiosity and interest. James is not a Thug. He solemnly assures me that in all his wanderings he has never set foot in Sepoy.
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The Judge rode slowly down the lane, smoothing his horse's chestnut inane.
He drew his bridle in the shade of the apple-trees to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that flowed through the meadow across the road
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, and filled for him her small tin cup.
And blushed as she gave it, lookirjg down on her feet so bare, and her tattered gown
" Thanks ! " said the Judge ; " a sweeter draught fiom a fairer hand was never quaffed. "
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, of the singing birds and the humming bees ;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether the clcud in the west would bring foul
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, and her gtaceful ankles bare and brown [weathf>r
And listened, while a pleased surprise looked from her long-!ashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed : " Ah me ! That I the Judge's bride m'ght be !
''^He would dress me up in silks so fine, and praise and toast me at his wine.
" My father should wear a broadcloth coat ; uiy brother should sail a painted boat.
" I'd dress ray mother so grand and gay, and tne baby should have a new toy each day
" And I'd feed the hungry and clbthe the poor, and all should bless me who left our door '
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, and saw Maud Muller standing still.
" A form more fair, a face more sweet, ne'er hath it been my iot to meet.
" And her modest answer and graceful air show her wise and good as she is fair:
" Would she were mine, and I to-day, like her, a harvester of hay ;
" No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
" But low of cattle and song of birds, and health and^uiet and loving woids."
But he thought of his sisters proud and cold, and his 'mother vain of her rank and golrj.
So, closing his heart the Judge rode on and Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, when he hummed in Court an old love tune ;
And the young girl mused besides the well till the lain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower, who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, he watched a picture come and go ;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, he longed for the wayside well instead ;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms to dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, " Ah, that I was fiee again !
" Free as when I rode that day, where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor, and many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot on the new-mown hay in the meadow lot.
And she heard the little spring brook fall over the road side, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again she saw a rider draw his rein.
And, gazing down with timid grace, she felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls stretched away into stately halls ;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, the tallow candle an a&tral burned,
And for him who sat by the chimney lug, dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw, and joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again, saying only, " It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, for rich repiner and household drudge !
God pity them both ! and pity us all, who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these : " It might have been."
Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies deeply buiied from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may roll the stone from its grave away ! Whittikp.
What Higher aim can Man attain than Conquest over Human Pain ?
The JEOPARDY OF LIFE IS IMMENSELY INCREASED without such a simple precaution as
ESN^O'S *FRXJIT SALT,'
How important it is to every individual to have at hand some simple, eff"ective and palatable remedy such as ' FRUIT SALT ' to check disease at the onset. Whenever a change is contemplated likely to disturb the condition of health, let it be your companion, for, under any circumstances, its use is beneficial, and never can do harm. " It Is not too much to s ly tnat Us merits have been published, tested, and approved literally, from pole to pole, and that its cosmopolitan popularity to-day presents one of the most signal illustrations of commercial enterprise to be found in our trading TecoTds.''~hitro/>ea?t Afatl. Its effect upon any Disordered, Sleepless, and Feverish condition is simply niaivellocs. CAUTION.- Examine each bottleand see that the capsule is marked FNO'S 'FRUIT SALT.' Without it, you have been imposed upon by a WORTHLESS IMITATION.
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